Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Betty MacDonald fan club newsletter March will be available soon.
Many more wonderful interviews by Wolfgang Hampel with Betty MacDonald's and Mary Bard's family will be published.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography and interviewer of
Betty MacDonald's and Mary Bard's family and friends got
first Betty MacDonald Memorial Award for his outstanding research and work.
March is a very exciting month because of several very important birthdays.
Send a birthday card with your thoughts of Betty MacDonald and her books to us and you might be our Betty MacDonald fan club contest winner.
Deadline: March 15, 2016
You can win a first edition of Betty MacDonald's golden egg with a very cute dedication for one of her fans.
International Betty MacDonald fan club events are the best opportunity making wonderful friends.Great Vita Magica news!
Wolfgang Hampel's new Vita Magica guest was a very famous TV lady, author and singer.
Tatjana Geßler is an outstanding new Betty MacDonald fan club honor member.
Wolfgang Hampel already introduced Betty MacDonald fan club honor member - artist and author Letizia Mancino - in Vita Magica.
Other Betty MacDonald fan club honor members will follow.
The thrill of it all is that one and only Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is back.
Enjoy a new breakfast with Brad and Nick, please.
Betty MacDonald very beautiful Vashon Island is a magical place.Poland and Germany are my ESC 2016 favourites.
I hope one of them will win!
Many ESC fans can't wait to come to Stockholm.
Take care,
Sina
Don't miss this very special book, please.
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald fan clubBetty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles
The situation in Germany and Sweden with many refugees is rather difficult.
Betty MacDonald, Letizia Mancino, Mary Holmes and the second paradise
Betty MacDonald fan Club honor member, artist and writer Letizia Mancino shares her delightful story THE SECOND PARADISE.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mary Holmes did such a great job in translating THE SECOND PARADISE.
Thanks a million dearest Mary.
We are really very grateful.
I'm one of Letizia Maninco's many devoted fans.
Letizia Mancino sent this connecting piece to " The Second Paradise".
Yours,
Anita & Eartha Kitt II
DEFIANT AS A COCK
Copyright 2011/2016 by Letizia Mancino
translated by Mary Holmes
All rights reserved
That was how my friend Hilde Domin was, dear Betty! You would have liked her so much. She had also been in America. At that time you were a famous author but she was still unknown.
-Did she love cats like you do?
-Yes Betty, she sure did!! Otherwise how do you think she could have been a friend of mine?
-Oh Letizia, don’t boast! Hilde was famous!
-It’s all the same to me, Betty, whether a person is famous or not but that person must love animals
-Why was she as defiant as a cock?
-Well Betty, she was simply so!
-Like a pregnant woman in my “Egg and I”?
-No not so! Betty, Hilde was a whole farm!
- A farm, how was that?
- No Betty, Hilde was more! Almost a zoo! Even more. She was all the animals in the world!
-You loved her very much.
-As I love all animals.
You Betty, if I had known you, I would have loved you exactly so because you loved animals.
-But as defiant as a cock from my Bob-farm!
-Yes and no! (Hilde really loved this double form of answer). Listen Betty , I’ll tell you a story about how Hilde was. You would certainly have loved her.
I’ll call my story “The Second Paradise”.
THE SECOND PARADISE
Copyright 2011/2016 by Letizia Mancino
translated by Mary Holmes
All rights reserved
The Lord God, one day, met Adam in Paradise and saw him lying under a palm.
And God spoke to him: Adam, my son, are you happy, are you content with Paradise ?
Adam answered: Oh Lord, it is wonderful!
And God said: But I will create a second Paradise and give you a wife.
Adam answered: Oh Lord, that is wonderful!
And God said: I will create the wife according to your wishes.
And Adam stood under the palm and thought hard.
And God said: Adam, are you ready?
Adam answered: My wife should be as lively as a bird but she should not fly. She should swim like a goldfish but not be a fish….. She should be as playful as a cat but not catch mice….. She should be as busy as an ant but not so small.
And God said: So shall she be: Like a bird, a goldfish, a cat, an ant…
Adam answered: Oh Lord, that is wonderful, but she should be as faithful as a dog.
And God asked: Adam, have you finished?
Oh Lord, cried Adam. She should also be as delightful and gentle as a lamb and as defiant as a cock!
….She should be as curious as a monkey and as pampered as a lapdog.
And God said: So shall she be.
And Adam said: My wife should be as courageous as a lion and as headstrong as a goat…
And God said: So, like a bird, a goldfish, a cat, an ant, a dog, a lamb, a cock, a monkey, a lapdog, a lion, a goat… and slowly and surely he wished to begin creating…
But Adam stretched himself under the palm and called:
Lord, Lord, she should be as adaptable as a chameleon but not creep on four feet.
She should have sparkling eyes like, like… real diamonds. She should be as fiery as a volcano
But … she should have crystal-clear thoughts like a mountain spring.
God, the Almighty, was speechless…
And Adam spoke: Also she should be as quick as lightening…
And God said: Man, have you finished????
No, said Adam! She should be as strong as a horse, as long living as an elephant but as light as a butterfly!
God found Adam’s thoughts were good and said: So, bird, goldfish, cat, ant, dog, lamb, cock, monkey, lapdog, lion, goat, chameleon, genuine diamonds, volcano, mountain spring, lightening, horse, elephant…. butterfly…
God wished at last to begin creating her…
Lord, called Adam… she should be as stable as steel, but as sweet as three graceful women in one…
And God asked: Should she also be a poet?
Yes, called Adam from under the palm…
And God said: Adam have you finished?
Lord, I wish that, in the second Paradise I shall be one and doubled:
So God according to Adams last words created:
HILDE PALM DOMIN
Very best wishes
Letizia Mancino
Merkel’s Dilemma
EU leaders are unhappy about the refugee crisis, and just as unhappy about her working with Turkey to solve it.
Alain Jocard/Getty Images
Time is running out for Angela Merkel. The term Mexit
is worming its way into Germany’s political vocabulary, because the
idea of Merkel’s departure after a decade in power is no longer
unthinkable. Having held together the European Union through the Greek
debt crisis and Russia’s war against Ukraine, Merkel is fighting for her
own survival as the undisputed leader of Germany—and a united Europe.
Even as the German chancellor sat up with Turkish Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu Sunday night hammering out a grand bargain on
Europe’s refugee crisis, the first results from Hessian municipal
elections were coming in: The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party was surging into the double digits, including in the country’s most international city, Frankfurt.
German television has dubbed March 13 “Super Sunday” because regional
elections in three states are being viewed as a referendum on Merkel’s
open-door refugee policy, which brought in more than 1 million
asylum-seekers in 2015. Recent polls
show the upstart Alternative for Germany rearranging the electoral
calculus as it siphons conservative voters disappointed with Merkel’s
Christian Democratic Union. To help stem the flow of migrants, the
chancellor is coddling and cajoling Turkey, the main transit country for
refugees heading to Europe from the Middle East’s war zones. Her
outreach, though, has the rest of Europe on edge.
Merkel’s struggle is filled with such contradictions. Restoring
passport-free travel among European countries means making the external
EU border virtually impenetrable. As the chancellor demonstrates
leadership in seeking a transnational solution, other EU leaders are
reluctant to follow her—not just because of Germany’s history as a
hegemon, but because Merkel is suspected of playing her own game.
Perhaps most preposterous is a new plan to reward Ankara’s cooperation
on border control by reinvigorating Turkey’s stalled bid to join the
European Union.
At a summit in Brussels on Monday, the European Union agreed to study a Turkish offer
to take back all “irregular migrants”—as people without proper
documentation are known in Eurocratese—in exchange for a hefty set of
concessions: For every Syrian refugee returned to Turkey, another Syrian
from a Turkish refugee camp will be resettled in the European Union; 3
billion euros in EU aid to care for Syrian refugees in Turkey, in
addition to an already promised 3 billion euros; the lifting of EU visa
requirements for Turkish citizens this summer; and accelerated talks on
EU membership for Turkey. In other words, refugees paying
people-smugglers their last savings for the dangerous sea passage to
Greece would go to the back of the line to go to Europe, while those
sitting tight in camps would be at the front. About 2.7 million Syrian refugees are living in Turkey, many of whom see a brighter future in the European Union.
The Turkish initiative came as a surprise to most of the assembled EU
leaders. Davutoglu had presented the demands to Merkel the night before
at a meeting that reportedly lasted more than five hours. Although the
chancellor later denied any involvement in the Turkish proposal, she couldn’t dispel the impression in Brussels that she had somehow been behind it.
What’s indisputable is that Merkel has been actively seeking Turkey’s
help since the fall, when unprecedented numbers of migrants streamed
into Germany after she accepted thousands of refugees stranded in
Hungary. Merkel publicly made the case that if the 28 EU countries
worked in concert, they wouldn’t need to close their internal borders
and could comfortably take in however many Syrians fleeing that
country’s civil war. At the same time, she set about trying to convince
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop the refugee trek at the
source.
With the same persistence that she had pursued a cease-fire in
Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Merkel turned to Erdogan.
The no-nonsense daughter of a Lutheran pastor was turned off by the two
leaders’ machoism and vanity. But just as she recognized that Ukraine
was a matter of war and peace in Europe, Merkel understood that no
solution to the refugee crisis could exclude Turkey.
Photographs from an October meeting in Istanbul showed Erdogan and
Merkel sitting side by side in gold thrones like a king and queen. Not
only was the chancellor mocked as playing Erdogan’s “favorite lady-in-waiting,” she faced criticism for being instrumentalized by the Turkish president just before parliamentary elections. In November, the European Union and Turkey agreed on a “joint action plan” that promised Ankara 3 billion euros to improve the plight of Syrian refugees in return for better EU relations. The leaked minutes of a conversation between Erdogan and EU executives
cited the Turkish president demanding twice as much money and
threatening to send busloads of refugees over the European Union’s land
borders if he didn’t get his way.
Merkel knew whom she was dealing with. In January, she invited Davutoglu’s Cabinet to Berlin for the first-ever intergovernmental consultations between the two countries. Less than a month later, Merkel and Erdogan caught NATO off guard by suggesting that the alliance could supply ships to patrol the waters between Turkey and Greece to stop human traffickers.
Erdogan was isolated after shooting down a Russian warplane
following Putin’s entry into the Syrian civil war on the side of
Turkey’s rival, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. NATO wasn’t interested
in getting involved in Erdogan’s self-inflicted dispute with the
Kremlin. The Turkish military’s campaign against Kurdish fighters—the
West’s most reliable allies in Syria—complicated matters even more. The
refugee crisis presented Erdogan with a way out of his quandary.
Attention from NATO and EU are making his loneliness go away, although
his style of rule hasn’t changed in the least.
Over the weekend, Turkish authorities took control over the opposition Zaman newspaper and fired rubber bullets on female demonstrators protesting violence against women. After Monday’s summit, conservatives in Merkel’s own party railed against making too many concessions to Turkey, while human-rights groups and aid organizations criticized the new deal for its treatment of refugees risking their lives at sea.
In Brussels, Merkel downplayed the prospects for Turkey’s speedy entry into the European Union but added that “very close cooperation with Turkey is in our geopolitical interest”—unusual words for a German chancellor.
At this point in Merkel’s career, solving the refugee crisis is about more than just winning elections. In a live television interview in February,
she called it the “most difficult problem of my chancellorship.” Unlike
most of her other EU colleagues, Merkel is perfectly aware of the
moment’s historical significance.
Her dilemma is whether the European values she champions end at Europe’s borders.
Lucian Kim, a former Moscow correspondent, is now based in Berlin. Follow him on Twitter.
