INTRODUCING THE: EURPEAN EVENT CALENDER WETZCON 1956 - through the eyes of a 15 y.o. GREGORY BENFORD My BIG BROTHER * LCol TIME IS AN ILLUSION. LUNCHTIME DOUBLY SO. (D.Adams) Coverart by Wolf von Witting / Monica Marin (Crematorium, Bucharest) Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream; yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. (Edgar Allan Poe) COUNTERCLCK # 16 THE PRCESS OF WRITING... You meet fewer idiots around here. Yes, you meet less academics as well. But absolutely no misfit has been foremost on my mind, ever since I first youngsters who vandalize out of boredom, no began to publish CounterClock. To improve my drunk supporter hooligans roaring in the night, no diction, to find generally stimulating and amusing drug peddler on the corner, no vomit left behind things to write about and to investigate if there by disorderly kids, etc And when there is a bad ever was any thought on my puny little mind worth apple in this village, everyone knows who it is. preserving. I can't possibly be the judge of this The latest great disturbance to peace going, was myself. And the power of words range beyond the mobile phone. It could not really do anything their written manifestation. True or false, words my computer can not do for me. And when I am cause consequences. It is strange, considering busy with something other than the computer, I do how little we all know, that so many feel their not really need to be interrupted by a call. I am opinion matters enough to go public with it. simply not an important enough person. Any Recently I was told that scientists have concluded message to me can just as well be sent through that the coming generations are going to be more email or FB. I read those messages every day. intelligent, since they are being bombarded with information. I doubt this. I wish it were so, but the I read A LOT when I was young. Among the books sheer volume of disinformation everyone in fact is I read was The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, being bombarded with merely serves to confuse. but I have to admit I can no longer tell you what it Some have noticed how their brain starts working was about. I do not have the slightest clue. as their lips stop moving. Many appear to be I forgot. I had already forgotten it in the 90's. afraid of the apparent emptiness of silence. Yet, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - only in silence, we find peace to process what we have learned. 1984 I seek silence as much as I seek knowledge. I recall the actual year very well. At the time, as it came about I was working as a language teacher in The first great disturbance of peace to go was the a school in the Stockholm suburb of Orminge. TV-set [I still can see films and TV-series using a It was the first (and only) year, that I had the task to dvd-player and a digital projector]. give students their final grades. A quite uncom- Oh, what wonderful peace, not having my time fortable task, if you bear in mind their future may wasted by commercial intermissions. Moving from depend on your verdict. What is really to say, what a the city to the countryside was another splendid students effort is worth, and how do you value idea. Precious little advertising is done here. them? Some work really hard, to achieve good The distance to airports, railway station, hotels, results, but you do not necessarily notice them, nor cinema, shops, etc, is still the same as before. But can you tell from how they act in class. The quiet their are fields of waving corn, tree plantations, type can make an intelligent impression merely by keeping their mouths shut. Yes, you have test results brooks and other farmland in between, instead of giving you a decent indication, but as I recall from clusters of condominiums. my own days in college, the feelings of a teacher about the student taint the grade more than what the teacher wants to admit. And I liked all of my students, more or less. This moral dilemma was an unsolvable issue for my conscience. I quit after the end of the semester. On June 30th to July 1st NASACON V was held in Villa Caprifol / Saltsjöbaden. It was the 4th (of 6) conventions held at this location and gathered more than 60 fans. Our Guest of Honor was Lars-Olov Strandberg, the grand old fan of Sverifandom. Ahrvid Engholm introduced the Great Peanut Race, in which the object of the game was to fabricate a device with which a peanut could be transported a distance of 4 meter (without destroying the peanut). I happened to win the first edition of this race using a mimeograph. And early in August I packed my bicycle and went Toon by Bill Rotsler 1926-1997 down to Germany. 1,600 km in two weeks (resting a 2 COUNTERCLCK # 16 day in Kalmar / Sweden, one in Cologne and 2 days My brother was born 1954, my sister in 1956 and I in Recklinghausen / Germany). came just before the end of the decade. We were all Best average distance was between Travemünde born in Borgå, roughly 40 km east of Helsinki, which and Recklinghausen, 450 km - which was traversed gives the impression they lived there throughout the in 2 days. After this accomplishment, if memory still 50's. Not so. Between every birth, they fled the serves, I momentarily turned into a big a-hole of self- family enterprise at the Borgå Steam Sawmill and confidence and gratuitous selfishness. lived in Helsinki where dad occasionally earned a living in the warehouse at Stockmann's. BIG BROTHER Yuri Gagarin's orbit around the Earth on 12th April in 1961 was great news on my mother's side and she recaptured the space program since Sputnik for us. While dad was passionate for the stars of the silver screen, the stars of the sky were her domain. But frictions with mother-in-law and dads attachment to his own mum prompted us to relocate to Germany in the early 60's. To the town of Recklinghausen in the Ruhr-area. Again, frictions with mother-in-law (the other one), made life sometimes a little difficult for all of us. But I learned something very important in these years. I learned to turn over the 45 rpm single we had of Smetana's Die Moldau, so I could listen to the second half of the musical masterpiece. I distinctly remember the 23rd of November in 1963. My parents were very upset, because this Kennedy person had been shot. I figured it must have been a Dieter von Witting 10th Sept 1954 - 30th Sept 2013 and close friend of my parents. myself at the small mountainside castle of Artegna in Out of the blue I got my first kiss in Recklinghausen. north-eastern Italy 2010. It was during the carneval, when a I observed a long This summer my brother said we ought to write a legged majorette gracefully dancing out of line and book about our childhood. The astute reader has towards me and my mum. Suddenly the world went already deduced that there can be no such book. dark and I felt a wet smack right in the middle of my A few paragraphs in CounterClock will have to do. face. Before I had time to wave my arms in defence, she was already back into the parade. I don't know if Our parents met on midsummers eve 1953 at a barn this has anything to do with it, but since then I have dance located in the coastal forest near Borgå in always been a sucker for legs. Finland. Dad was a German sailor and the cook aboard his ship, mum was an aspiring art student. Upon concluding my limited research, I found that he dreamed of becoming an actor, something he may actually have had a natural talent for. Apart from this artistic assertion and both being incurably romantic, their main common interest was music. Mum was playing the piano and dad was singing. Actually, dad was doing passable impersonations of Zarah Leander (1907-1981), which eventually led him to sing with big band back-up on national radio in Finland. At a rare occasion, when she herself was in the audience, Zarah Leander stepped up to him and thanked him for doing such a great job of it. He was dressed up as she used to be, with make-up and imitated all of her characteristic gestures while singing. He did sound a lot like her. He was after all Recklinghausen majorette, photo, copyright: Henning Kaiser her biggest fan. And she considered it an awesome compliment. Quiet family life ended abruptly with a big bang early He just was no good at holding a job for long. in 1965, the outer door slammed shut, my brother 3 COUNTERCLCK # 16 and sister were taken to foster parents and dad went back to sea, cooking for sailors. It followed almost a I didn't understand this. Neither did I understand that year, when I was alone with mum until she failed to my subconscious reverted back to the safe time as a commit suicide on Christmas eve in 1965.