Friday, June 2, 2017

Betty MacDonald, Betty MacDonald biography and the greatest strategic gift



C0oDfSoVQAA1NP8_1_.jpg














mrs. piggle wiggle, hello_english_cassette_FRONT






















Pippi, you're the best. 












































































Hello 'Pussy' it's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Pippi Longstocking: 

 
You have managed to turn America First into America Isolated.
In pulling out of the Paris climate accord, you created a vacuum of global leadership that presents ripe opportunities to allies and adversaries alike to reorder the world’s power structure. Your decision is perhaps the greatest strategic gift to the Chinese, who are eager to fill the void that Washington is leaving around the world on everything from setting the rules of trade and environmental standards to financing the infrastructure projects that give Beijing vast influence.


trump-protests-13.jpg

 plague_English_1994_paperback_FRONT
  
Should I remain in bed, leave my country or fight against the dragon?

( see also the story by Wolfgang Hampel
' Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say ' )
plague_english_1948_paperback_FRONT
plague_German_1952_hardcover_bookjacket - cleaned_FRONT

The Egg and I Film Illustration























 


Click images for alternate views
Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald Christmas
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle author Betty MacDonald on Vashon Island
<p>Time Out of Mind (1947) - avec Betty et Don MacDonald et Phyllis Calvert</p>

Betty and Don MacDonald in Hollywood

Bild könnte enthalten: eine oder mehrere Personen und Personen, die sitzen


Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney with grandchild Alison Beck
http://seattletimes.com/ABPub/2011/06/16/2015337656.jpg



https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Lz-XI6UKKn_UntDFTXUyC3xIjB_Kd2CZeDbFLcRgjmP9OvEOQIyJwwWESXnoky0AIVRBwiJjMHeFf66GwUFNV-2UyuESVpheU1niWNYE3FrAL-H5ysqaDsQDdjOx6Gd_mZfNGCLI9clm/s1600/bards.jpgImage may contain: 1 person, standing
Image may contain: 1 person, closeup
Image may contain: 2 people
Betty MacDonald in the living room at Vashon on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.










Betty MacDonald























Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

if you know who is this very beautiful lady and the handsome young guy besides James Bond send us their names, please


You can order our new Betty MacDonald and Alison Bard Burnett CD and DVD!
DVD and CD are different. You can see Betty MacDonald, her sister Alison Bard Burnett and other family members and friends in front of the camera for the first time!

We can offer you new wonderful Betty MacDonald Fan Club Items and a new Betty MacDonald and Alison Bard Burnett CD and DVD published by Betty MacDonald Fan Club 2010. More exciting news about Betty MacDonald's filmed interview will come soon.

Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard was born March 26, 1907 in Boulder, Colorado, the second child of Sydney and Darsie Bard. Betsy and her three sisters and brother had an adventurous, somewhat unconventional childhood owing to the strong and creative personalities of their parents and Darsie's mother, "Gammy," and the many lessons in independence they survived gracefully. ( see story Betty and Gammy written by Wolfgang Hampel published by Betty MacDonald Fan Club 2009/2010 and Interviews with Betty MacDonald and her sister Alison Bard published on CD/DVD Betty MacDonald Fan Club 2009/2010. The interviews on CD and DVD are different ones )
When Betsy was 12 her father died of pneumonia, but the family's strong relationships and optimism remained intact through this sorrow and the ensuing financial trials.
Betsy (who later preferred the nickname Betty) said that for the Bard children, there were really only two household rules: "We were expected to be polite and to tell the truth, no matter how appalling. "Apart from that, the Bard children did as they pleased and went forth into the world with well-defined personalities, acutely-developed senses of humor and adventure, and a remarkable zest for life.
Betty married at 20 and went to live on a chicken ranch in the Olympic mountains. Her experiences there are chronicled in her first book, The Egg and I . ( see books The Kettles' Million Dollar Egg, The Egg and Betty, The Tragic end of Robert Eugene Heskett by Wolfgang Hampel published by BMC 2009)
Life in such isolation and hardship palled after 4 years and she returned with her two small daughters to her Seattle family just as the Depression hit. The amazing stories of their survival and triumph are related in Anybody Can Do Anything. Betty and her family had a wonderful friend who supported them during this very difficult time.
( see Betty and Mike by Wolfgang Hampel published by BMC 2009 and Wolfgang Hampel's interview with Alison Bard published by BMC 2009/2010)
Alison Bard tells some delightful treasure stories about this wonderful friend.

But Betty's career as a businesswoman was cut short when she contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and entered Firlands, an endowed sanitorium north of Seattle. Lying flat on one's back for 8 1/2 months doesn't seem the stuff of which humor can be made, but Betty did indeed spin gold out of straw, in The Plague and I.
( see Betty MacDonald's illness written by Wolfgang Hampel and published 2009 by BMC and comments of Betty MacDonald's family and friends incl. Betty MacDonald's wonderful friend Kimi )

After her recovery, Betty married Donald MacDonald and they moved their family to Vashon Island, leading an idyllic and interesting existence as portrayed in Onions in the Stew. While on Vashon Betty also wrote her works for children: the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series and Nancy and Plum.

Betty and her husband bought a ranch near Carmel, but illness forced her to move back to Seattle. She died of cancer at the age of 50 on February 7, 1958. ( see Betty MacDonald's illness by Wolfgang Hampel, published by BMC 2009 and Wolfgang Hampel's interview with Alison Bard, published by BMC 2009/2010 )

Why is Betty's writing so beloved among so many people all over the world? The first and most obvious reason is that it's hilarious - sharp, sometimes irreverent. vivid and unexpected. Betty manages to find humor everywhere: on the early morning streetcar, in a hospital ward, in a home with two cranky adolescents, in job situations from farm work to secretarial duties. To read Betty's writing is to laugh -- often out loud, in public places, whether you want to or not. She has a terrific eye for the absurd and can paint a striking and side-splitting word picture in a few succinct strokes.
But Betty fans also love her optimism, her strength, her intense love for her family, her times of self-doubt, and the zest with which she approaches all of life and relishes simple pleasures.( see many comments of Betty MacDonald Fans in books, stories and interviews with Betty MacDonald's family and friends published by BMC 2009/2010 )

Betty's indomitable sister Mary Bard, whom we encounter in all four books but meet most vividly in Anybody Can Do Anything, also went on to write (her first book is dedicated to Betty, "Who Egged Me On"). Mary's books, The Doctor Wears Three Faces, Forty-Odd, Just Be Yourself, and the children's series Best Friends, are also much beloved by Betty fans who find themselves quickly becoming Mary fans as well. ( see Wolfgang Hampel's interviews with Alison Bard. She tells the most interesting stories about Mary, Betty and the Bard family. )
The CD and DVD interviews are different ones.


 

Do you have any books by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen with funny or interesting dedications?


If so would you be so kind to share them.


Our next Betty MacDonald fan club project is a collection of these unique dedications.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Lz-XI6UKKn_UntDFTXUyC3xIjB_Kd2CZeDbFLcRgjmP9OvEOQIyJwwWESXnoky0AIVRBwiJjMHeFf66GwUFNV-2UyuESVpheU1niWNYE3FrAL-H5ysqaDsQDdjOx6Gd_mZfNGCLI9clm/s1600/bards.jpg


If you share your dedication from your Betty MacDonald - and Mary Bard Jensen collection you might be the winner of our new Betty MacDonald fan club items.


Thank you so much in advance for your support.

 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6iy7HXAjOiZLlA0CdgLZ1yQBXO3CxmmsFCEoOj9RKR4Hf_f1TaXA2hThyphenhyphenvrZ9NthrFRE9d3qOXjblfDJaVPkcgY5UCImCfYgc7IYkkqctV1sLc7oJG3STKcFRvRStbJ9mheFGv1oRoc/s1600/M7a

 

 

 

 



 





 


 






Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography.

This very new Betty MacDonald biography includes all the results we got during a very successful Betty MacDonald fan club research which started in 1983.

You'll be able to find unique Betty MacDonald treasures in our Betty MacDonald biography.




Betty MacDonald biography includes for example interviews with Betty MacDonald, her family and friends.

We got many letters by Betty MacDonald and other family members even very important original ones.



Our goal is to publish a Betty MacDonald biography that shows all the details of Betty MacDonald's life and work but also to present her fascinating siblings.

Dear Betty MacDonald fan club fans let us know please what you are interested most in a future Betty MacDonald biography.  


We are working on a Who is who? in Betty MacDonald's books. 

 

Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett shared her unique memories in these treasure interviews with Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.



Don't miss Vita Magica on May 30th, please.

There are several writers reading stories about their Heidelberg experiences and you'll be able to hear the original  very famous Heidelberg songs.

Betty MacDonald influenced many writers, artists and fans to move to Washington State.

They adore her books and her unique descriptions of nature.




 
Patricia Longhi is one of many examples.

What are the reasons so many people love Evergreen State?

Don't miss the very interesting article below.

  
Posted in Washington May 03, 2017 by

11 Completely Absurd Reasons To Love Washington

Yes, Washington is breathtakingly beautiful… and our scenery is diverse… and our produce is second to none. That being said, when you live in the Evergreen State long enough, you start to love it for its quirks. You develop quite a sense of humor about your home, and when people ask what you adore so much about it, you can hardly contain yourself.

Even if you don’t agree with these 11 reasons to love Washington, you must admit they’re valid, if not a bit silly.

see article below 




Bildergebnis für vashon island

That's such a great story of Vashon Islander Kay Longhi. 

Don't miss this very interesting story, please.

Reading this delightful story I'd like to move to Vashon Island. 

Bildergebnis für vashon island


Islander Kay Longhi and her twin sister were only 6 years old when they moved to Vashon from Chicago in the 1950s, but Longhi, now in her 60s and still living on Vashon, can vividly recall the move and the events leading up to it.

The decision to leave the Midwest was made by Longhi’s mother, Patricia Longhi, who Kay said was tired of living in cities and longed for the same kind of authenticity she witnessed on childhood vacations to a farm in Maine. Patricia found that opportunity in a 1954 radio interview with infamous island author Betty MacDonald.

“Arthur Godfrey interviewed Betty MacDonald on his radio program. She talked about her book ‘Onions in the Stew,’ and it intrigued Mother,” Kay Longhi said. “When Daddy came home, she announced that we were moving to Vashon.”

Bildergebnis für Arthur Godfrey  Betty MacDonaldBildergebnis für Betty MacDonald Onions in the Stew


( see article below ) 





I totally agree the author of an oustanding Betty MacDonald biography needs a very good sense of humor.
 
We will be able to offer you very witty and exciting stories because of our outstanding Betty MacDonald research and many  interviews with Betty MacDonald's family and friends by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.

We are going to publish new Betty MacDonald fan club items including new Betty MacDonald interviews by Wolfgang Hampel.

Work and life of Betty MacDonald had been honored by Wolfgang Hampel in Vita Magica.


More Betty MacDonald events will follow.


Betty MacDonald fan club fans from 5 continents enjoy these unique very witty interviews and new ones will follow.


We are looking for signed or dedicated first editions in great condition with dust jackets by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen for our fans.

Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel  and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography and new Betty MacDonald documentary.


Join one of our Betty MacDonald fan club research teams, please. 

Thanks a million in advance for your outstanding support.

Let's talk about Betty MacDonald fan club book cover contest.

You can vote for your favourite Betty MacDonald book cover.

Deadline: July 15, 2017

Betty MacDonald fan club book cover contest winner will be  owner of a signed first edition of one of Betty MacDonald's books.  



egg_italian_1948_paperback_bookjacket - cleaned_FRONT


Send us your mail, please and maybe you'll be the winner of Betty MacDonald fan club surprise.

Good luck!



Our most important research item is an updated Betty MacDonald documentary with  lots of new info and interviews with Betty MacDonald, her family and friends.


Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel  told us that Betty MacDonald fan club research team does an excellent job in supporting him with his several Betty MacDonald projects especially an updated Betty MacDonald biography.

Reading this updated Betty MacDonald biography you'll learn the true story of many personalities in Betty MacDonald's books for example the mysterious and rather strange Ms. Dorita Hess from 'Anybody can do anything'.

Tell us, please what should a Betty MacDonald biography include?

Don't hesitate to send us your thoughts, please.

I'd say a real Betty MacDonald biography should also include fascinating info on Betty MacDonald's fascinating brother and sisters including adopted sister Madge.

As we can see Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett got so many fans because of her unique interviews with Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.

We are going to offer some interviews by Wolfgang Hampel, never published before.



Many fans adore the new outstanding website of beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli. 



Don't miss it, please. 

 














Surprise, surprise!

We found new radio manuscripts and shows. 

We are working on Betty MacDonald fan club exhibit and an updated Betty MacDonald documentary.



Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel  told us that Betty MacDonald fan club research team does an excellent job in supporting him with his several Betty MacDonald projects especially an updated Betty MacDonald biography.

Betty MacDonald fan club event team is very happy to hear from you and they got some really great ideas for the next International event. 

Thanks a lot! 


You can join Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club on Facebook.

Join us, please. We have lots of fun and joy and had several International ESC meetings in the past. 


Vita Magica with Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Letizia Maninco was outstanding.

The audience enjoyed it very much.
 
Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica is  fascinating because he includes Betty MacDonald, other members of the Bard family and Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli  and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.

Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.

Letizia Mancino's  magical Betty MacDonald Gallery  is a special gift for our Betty MacDonald fan club fans. 




We'll have several International Betty MacDonald fan club events  in 2017.


Join us in voting for your favourite city, please. 



Wolfgang Hampel's  Vita Magica guest was a very famous TV lady, author and singer and she is our new Betty MacDonald fan club honor member.

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is our beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member.


I guess our Casanova adores our Betty MacDonald fan club honor member very much because author and TV moderator Tatjana Geßler is a very beautiful, charming and intelligent lady. 


Tatjana Geßler's books are outstanding. I've read several of them. 

Enjoy Betty MacDonald's very beautiful Vashon Island, please.





Great Betty MacDonald fan club news!
 

You can join 

Betty MacDonald fan club

Betty MacDonald Society

Vita Magica

 

on Facebook.

 

Thank you so much in advance for your support and interest.

If you join Betty MacDonald fan club blog as a follower during March you'll receive a very special Betty MacDonald fan club Welcome gift.

Send your email-address to our contact address, please. 


Great news!

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is back and his fans are delighted.

We'll have several International Betty MacDonald fan club events  in 2017. 

Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica March, please. 

You'll enjoy it very much. 



You can see brilliant Brad Craft. 



"This is Me," by Bad Kid Billy. [Official Music Video]


Seems I'm in this for a hot second.  I remember being asked to participate one day on the street in front of the bookstore where I work.  I didn't think to ask what it was for, or even so much as the name of the song or the band.  Didn't want to be late coming back from lunch.  Silly bugger.  The very nice young woman with the green hair also featured herein happens to work at Magus Books.  She mentioned she'd seen me.  Told me the name of the band, and here we are.



Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Monica Sone and other Betty MacDonald fan club honor members will be included in Wolfgang Hampel's new project 'Vita Magica'. 
 





We got very interesting new info for updated Betty MacDonald biography.

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to include all these new details and info in updated Betty MacDonald biography.

If you'd like to join Betty MacDonald fan club you only have to press the join button on Betty MacDonald fan club blog.


New Betty MacDonald fan club fans will receive a special Betty MacDonald fan club Welcome gift during May.  

Send us your email address to our contact address, please.


Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica February was outstanding and so was Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen


 
We are going to publish some new Betty MacDonald fan club interviews  by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.
 

Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography.
 


This very new Betty MacDonald biography includes all the results we got during a very successful Betty MacDonald fan club research which started in 1983.

You'll be able to find unique Betty MacDonald treasures in our Betty MacDonald biography.

Betty MacDonald biography includes for example interviews with Betty MacDonald, her family and friends.

We got many letters by Betty MacDonald and other family members even very important original ones.


Our goal is to publish a Betty MacDonald biography that shows all the details of Betty MacDonald's life and work but also to present her fascinating siblings.

Dear Betty MacDonald fan club fans let us know please what you are interested most in a future Betty MacDonald biography.  

Do you prefer an e-book or a so called real book?
 
Vita Magica by Wolfgang Hampel is really fascinating and very interesting.



Wolfgang Hampel and Friends of Vita Magica visited Minister of Science of Baden-Württemberg, Theresia Bauer in Stuttgart.

They visited Landtag and had a great time there.
 

Thank you so much for sending us your favourite Betty MacDonald quote.


We are so glad that our beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is back.

New  Betty MacDonald documentary will be very interesting with many new interviews.

Alison Bard Burnett and other Betty MacDonald fan club honor members will be included in Wolfgang Hampel's fascinating project Vita Magica.







Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel interviewed Betty MacDonald's daughter Joan MacDonald Keil and her husband Jerry Keil.

This interview will be published for the first time ever.



New Betty MacDonald documentary will be very interesting with many interviews never published before.


We adore Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli 


Thank you so much for sharing this witty memories with us.


Wolfgang Hampel's literary event Vita Magica is very fascinating because he is going to include Betty MacDonald, other members of the Bard family and Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.

It's simply great to read Wolfgang Hampel's  new very well researched  stories about Betty MacDonald, Robert Eugene Heskett, Donald Chauncey MacDonald, Darsie Bard, Sydney Bard, Gammy, Alison Bard Burnett,  Darsie Beck, Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Reynolds Jensen, Sydney Cleveland Bard, Mary Alice Bard, Dorothea DeDe Goldsmith, Madge Baldwin, Don Woodfin, Mike Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nancy and Plum, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others.

 


Linde Lund and many fans from all over the world  adore this funny sketch by Wolfgang Hampel very much although our German isn't the best.

I won't ever forget the way Wolfgang Hampel is shouting ' Brexit '.

Don't miss it, please.

It's simply great!

You can hear that Wolfgang Hampel got an outstandig voice.

He presented one of Linde Lund's favourite songs ' Try to remember ' like a professional singer.

Thanks a million!

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli  and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.

Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.

Letizia Mancino's  magical Betty MacDonald Gallery  is a special gift for Betty MacDonald fan club fans from all over the world.


Don't miss Brad Craft's 'More friends', please. 

Betty MacDonald's very beautiful Vashon Island is one of my favourites.


I agree with Betty in this very witty Betty MacDonald story  Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say by Wolfgang Hampel.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has managed to turn America First into America Isolated.
In pulling out of the Paris climate accord, Mr. Trump has created a vacuum of global leadership that presents ripe opportunities to allies and adversaries alike to reorder the world’s power structure. His decision is perhaps the greatest strategic gift to the Chinese, who are eager to fill the void that Washington is leaving around the world on everything from setting the rules of trade and environmental standards to financing the infrastructure projects that give Beijing vast influence.
Mr. Trump’s remarks in the Rose Garden on Thursday were also a retreat from leadership on the one issue, climate change, that unified America’s European allies, its rising superpower competitor in the Pacific, and even some of its adversaries, including Iran. He did it over the objections of much of the American business community and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, who embraced the Paris accord when he ran Exxon Mobil, less out of a sense of moral responsibility and more as part of the new price of doing business around the world.
As Mr. Trump announced his decision, the Paris agreement’s goals were conspicuously reaffirmed by friends and rivals alike, including nations where it would have the most impact, like China and India, as well as the major European Union states and Russia.






Did dinosaurs fart their way to extinction?
 Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald Dorothea Goldsmith


Did dinosaurs fart their way to extinction?
I think the future dinosaur flatulence will be the behaviour of 'Pussy' and his very strange government.

Poor World!    Poor America! 

Don't miss these very interesting articles below, please. 



The most difficult case in Mrs.Piggle-Wiggle's career 



mrs. piggle wiggle's magic_korean_2011_hardcover_FRONT



Hello 'Pussy', this is Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. 

You took calls from foreign leaders on unsecured phone lines, without consultung the State Department. We have to change your silly behaviour with a new Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cure. I know you are the most difficult case in my career - but we have to try everything.......................
























Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sent his brilliant thoughts. Thank you so much dear Wolfgang!             Bildergebnis für Donald Trump and Lady Liberty                


Hi Libi, nice to meet you. Can you feel it?



I'm the most powerful leader in the world.




Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say

Copyright 2016 by Wolfgang Hampel

All rights reserved 


Betty MacDonald was sitting on her egg-shaped cloud and listened to a rather strange guy.

He said to his friends: So sorry to keep you waiting. Very complicated business! Very complicated!

Betty said: Obviously much too complicated for you old toupee!

Besides him ( by the way the  First Lady's place ) his 10 year old son was bored to death and listened to this 'exciting' victory speech. 

The old man could be his great-grandfather.

The boy was very tired and thought: I don't know what this old guy is talking about. Come on and finish it, please. I'd like to go to bed.

Dear 'great-grandfather' continued  and praised the Democratic candidate.

He congratulated her and her family for a very strong campaign although he wanted to put her in jail.

He always called her the most corrupt person ever and repeated it over and over again in the fashion of a Tibetan prayer wheel.

She is so corrupt. She is so corrupt.  Do you know how corrupt she is? 

Betty MacDonald couldn't believe it when he said: She has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.

Afterwards old toupee praised his parents, wife, children, siblings and friends. 

He asked the same question like a parrot all the time:

Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
I know you are here!

Betty MacDonald answered: No Pussy they are not! They left the country.

They immigrated to Canada because they are very much afraid of the future in the U.S.A. with you as their leader like the majority of all so-called more or less normal citizens. 

By the way keep your finger far away from the pussies and the Red Button, please.


I'm going to fly with my egg-shaped cloud to Canada within a minute too.

Away - away - there is nothing more to say! 


Real vs. Ersatz







I am neither Christian enough nor charitable enough to like anybody just because he is alive and breathing. I want people to interest or amuse me. I want them fascinating and witty or so dul as to be different. I want them either intellectually stimulating or wonderfully corny; perfectly charming or hundred percent stinker. I like my chosen companions to be distinguishable from the undulating masses and I don't care how. - Betty MacDonald




Daniel Mount wrote a great article about Betty MacDonald and her garden.

We hope you'll enjoy it very much.

I adore Mount Rainier and Betty MacDonald's outstanding descriptions

Can you remember in which book you can find it?

If so let us know, please and you might be the next Betty MacDonald fan club contest winner. 

I hope we'll be able to read Wolfgang Hampel's  new very well researched  stories about Betty MacDonald, Robert Eugene Heskett, Donald Chauncey MacDonald, Darsie Bard, Sydney Bard, Gammy, Alison Bard Burnett,  Darsie Beck, Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Reynolds Jensen, Sydney Cleveland Bard, Mary Alice Bard, Dorothea DeDe Goldsmith, Madge Baldwin, Don Woodfin, Mike Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nancy and Plum, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others - very soon.

It' s such a pleasure to read them. 

Let's go to magical Betty MacDonald's  Vashon Island.



Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund  and Betty MacDonald fan club research team share their recent Betty MacDonald fan club research results.

Congratulations! They found the most interesting and important info for Wolfgang Hampel's oustanding  Betty MacDonald biography.

I enjoy Bradley Craft's story very much.  


Don't miss our Betty MacDonald fan club contests, please. 

 
You can win a never published before Alison Bard Burnett interview by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel. 

Good luck!  

This CD is a golden treasure because Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett shares unique stories about Betty MacDonald, Mary Bard Jensen, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Nancy and Plum. 





Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald and Ma and Pa Kettle biography and Betty MacDonald interviews have fans in 40 countries. I'm one of their many devoted fans. 


Many Betty MacDonald  - and Wolfgang Hampel fans are very interested in a Wolfgang Hampel CD and DVD with his very funny poems and stories.


We are going to publish new Betty MacDonald essays on Betty MacDonald's gardens and nature in Washington State.
 

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerl is beloved all over the World.

We are so happy that our 'Casanova'  is back.



Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to share very interesting info on ' Betty MacDonald and the movie The Egg and I '. 

Another rare episode (from March 21 1952) of the short-lived comedy soap opera, "The Egg and I," based on best selling book by Betty MacDonald which also became a popular film.

The series premiered on September 3, 1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1, 1952. 

Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as Pa Kettle.


Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.

 
I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.

Enjoy a great breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.

Best wishes,

Max 




Bildergebnis für wenatchee

Bildergebnis für apples from Wenatchee

 Bildergebnis für Butte




Bildergebnis für seattle




Bildergebnis für vashon island

Bildergebnis für Spring on Vashon Island


Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald and L'oeuf et moi

Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald fan club red rose



Bildergebnis für Arthur Godfrey  Betty MacDonald

Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald fan club

Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald Onions in the Stew
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Lz-XI6UKKn_UntDFTXUyC3xIjB_Kd2CZeDbFLcRgjmP9OvEOQIyJwwWESXnoky0AIVRBwiJjMHeFf66GwUFNV-2UyuESVpheU1niWNYE3FrAL-H5ysqaDsQDdjOx6Gd_mZfNGCLI9clm/s1600/bards.jpg
Anne MacDonald Canham

best friends by mary bard


la_conner_daffodil_festival_photo_winner_2014
Dare we face the question of just how much of the darkness around us is of our own making? - Betty MacDonald



Don't miss this very special book, please.

you can join 

Betty MacDonald fan club

Betty MacDonald Society  

Vita Magica  

Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club 

on Facebook



Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen

Vita Magica 

Betty MacDonald 

Betty MacDonald fan club 

Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook

Betty MacDonald forum  

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)   

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel -   

Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia  ( English / German )

Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )

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 - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)

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  


Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Greta Larson

Trump Hands the Chinese a Gift: The Chance for Global Leadership








 
A worker from Wuhan Guangsheng Photovoltaic Company worked last month on a solar panel project on the roof of a 47-story building in a new development in Wuhan, China. Credit Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — President Trump has managed to turn America First into America Isolated.
In pulling out of the Paris climate accord, Mr. Trump has created a vacuum of global leadership that presents ripe opportunities to allies and adversaries alike to reorder the world’s power structure. His decision is perhaps the greatest strategic gift to the Chinese, who are eager to fill the void that Washington is leaving around the world on everything from setting the rules of trade and environmental standards to financing the infrastructure projects that give Beijing vast influence.
Mr. Trump’s remarks in the Rose Garden on Thursday were also a retreat from leadership on the one issue, climate change, that unified America’s European allies, its rising superpower competitor in the Pacific, and even some of its adversaries, including Iran. He did it over the objections of much of the American business community and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, who embraced the Paris accord when he ran Exxon Mobil, less out of a sense of moral responsibility and more as part of the new price of doing business around the world.
As Mr. Trump announced his decision, the Paris agreement’s goals were conspicuously reaffirmed by friends and rivals alike, including nations where it would have the most impact, like China and India, as well as the major European Union states and Russia.
The announcement came only days after he declined to give his NATO allies a forceful reaffirmation of America’s commitment to their security, and a few months after he abandoned a trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that was designed to put the United States at the center of a trade group that would compete with — and, some argue, contain — China’s fast-growing economic might.

“The irony here is that people worried that Trump would come in and make the world safe for Russian meddling,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was briefly considered, then rejected, for a top post in the new administration. “He may yet do that,” Mr. Haass added, “but he has certainly made the world safe for Chinese influence.”

The president, and his defenders, argue that such views are held by an elite group of globalists who have lost sight of the essential element of American power: economic growth. Mr. Trump made that argument explicitly in the Rose Garden with his contention that the Paris accord amounted to nothing more than “a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.”
In short, he turned the concept of the agreement on its head. While President Barack Obama argued that the United Nations Green Climate Fund — a financial institution to help poorer nations combat the effects of climate change — would benefit the world, Mr. Trump argued that the American donations to the fund, which he halted, would beggar the country.
“Our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America’s sovereignty,” Mr. Trump said.

That, in short, encapsulates how Mr. Trump’s view of preserving American power differs from all of his predecessors, back to President Harry S. Truman. His proposed cuts to contributions to the United Nations and to American foreign aid are based on a presumption that only economic and military power count. “Soft power” — investments in alliances and broader global projects — are, in his view, designed to drain influence, not add to it, evident in the fact that he did not include the State Department among the agencies that are central to national security, and thus require budget increases.

It will take years to determine the long-term effects of his decision to abandon the Paris agreement, to the environment and to the global order. It will not break alliances: Europe is hardly about to embrace a broken, corrupt Russia, and China’s neighbors are simultaneously drawn to its immense wealth and repelled by its self-interested ambitions.

But Mr. Trump has added to the arguments of leaders around the world that it is time to rebalance their portfolios by effectively selling some of their stock in Washington. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has already announced her plan to hedge her bets, declaring last weekend after meeting Mr. Trump that she had realized “the times when we could completely rely on others are, to an extent, over.”


That may be temporary: It is still possible that Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday will amount to a blip in history, a withdrawal that takes so long — four years — that it could be reversed after the next presidential election. But for now it leaves the United States declaring that it is better outside the accord than in, a position that, besides America, has so far only been taken by Syria and Nicaragua. (Syria did not sign on because it is locked in civil war, Nicaragua because it believes the world’s richest nations did not sacrifice enough.)
But it is the relative power balance with China that absorbs anyone who studies the dance of great powers. Even before Mr. Trump’s announcement, President Xi Jinping had figured out how to embrace the rhetoric, if not the substance, of global leadership.
Mr. Xi is no free trader, and his nation has overtaken the United States as the greatest emitter of carbon by a factor of two. Only three years ago, it was a deal between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi that laid the groundwork for what became the broader Paris agreement.

Yet for months the Chinese president has been stepping unto the breach, including giving speeches at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that made it sound like China alone was ready to adopt the role of global standard-setter that Washington has occupied since the end of World War II.

“What the Paris accord represented, in a fractured world, was finally some international consensus, led by two big polluters, China and the United States, on a common course of action,” said Graham T. Allison, the author of a new book, “Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?”
“What you’d expect us to do is sustain our position by maintaining our most important relationship around the world and address what the citizens of our allies consider their most important problems: economic growth and an environment that sustains their children and grandchildren,’’ he added. “Instead, we are absenting the field.”

That sentiment was evident on Thursday in Berlin. Just hours before Mr. Trump spoke, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, stood alongside Ms. Merkel, and used careful words as he described China as a champion of the accord. China believed that fighting climate change was a an “international responsibility,” Mr. Li said, the kind of declaration that American diplomats have made for years when making the case to combat terrorism or nuclear proliferation or hunger.
China has long viewed the possibility of a partnership with Europe as a balancing strategy against the United States. Now, with Mr. Trump questioning the basis of NATO, the Chinese are hoping that their partnership with Europe on the climate accord may allow that relationship to come to fruition faster than their grand strategy imagined.
Naturally, the Chinese are using the biggest weapon in their quiver: Money. Their plan, known as “One Belt, One Road,” is meant to buy China influence from Ethiopia to Britain, from Malaysia to Hungary, all the while refashioning the global economic order.

Mr. Xi announced the sweeping initiative last month, envisioning spending $1 trillion on huge infrastructure projects across Africa, Asia and Europe. It is a plan with echoes of the Marshall Plan and other American efforts at aid and investment, but on a scale with little precedent in modern history. And the clear subtext is that it is past time to toss out the rules of aging, American-dominated international institutions, and to conduct commerce on China’s terms.



Trump and Merkel Hate Each Other. So What?

BERLIN — The Atlantic is rough these days, as stormy disregard blows from the United States to Europe and back. After President Trump attacked Germany’s trade practices, Chancellor Angela Merkel told a campaign rally in Munich that “the times we can completely rely on others are somewhat over” and that “we Europeans must take our destiny into our own hands.” Mr. Trump reacted with a tweeted threat, citing Germany’s failure to meet NATO’s military spending goals, saying “this will change.”
Ms. Merkel’s statement went viral, and by the next day her spokesman Steffen Seibert was doing damage control. He stressed that Ms. Merkel had called for more European independence before (which is correct) and that the chancellor is “a deeply convinced trans-Atlanticist” (which is correct, too). And it is true: On many levels, despite all the rhetorical thunder, little has changed in substance, so far.
Military experts say that within NATO, day-to-day business is somewhat hampered because positions on the American side are still unfilled but that it’s otherwise pretty much business as usual. They point out that the American brigade deployed in January 2017 to reassure Eastern Europe about Russia is still there.
The same is true for economic and environmental cooperation, at least in Germany. Scientists continue working together, and Germany’s economics minister, Brigitte Zypries, recently had a constructive, friendly meeting in Washington with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the United States trade representative Robert Lighthizer.

And yet Ms. Merkel’s statement was much more than just campaign chatter. Yes, she needs to assert independence in the face of a stronger-than-expected challenge from the center-left Social Democrats. But she meant what she said, and her statement accurately captures a new direction in trans-Atlantic relations.




As Mr. Seibert said, this isn’t the first time a European has called for self-sufficiency from America. It has been an annoying refrain for decades. But suddenly it’s being sung with new urgency — and excitement.











 
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Trump in Sicily in May. Credit Sean Gallup/Getty Images

For all the fears of Brexit and the National Front ripping apart Europe, the continent has an unprecedented opportunity to move closer together. Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 created a need to act in solidarity against an outside threat. For all the bitter fights, the union came out stronger for its struggles during the financial and refugee crises.
The German-French axis, the heart of the European project, is likely to gain new strength with the energetic President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, who won the election on a decidedly pro-European ticket. And the 2016 Brexit referendum put the European Union in fight-or-flight mode — and many seem to opt for fight along with France and Germany.

None of this has anything to do with Mr. Trump, who came into the story late. But with all this already underway, he will undoubtedly accelerate the trend away from the United States and toward a more unified, independent continent.


Don’t expect a sudden break, though. It’s not what Europe does. Take all the recent steps toward a unified military force. At last fall’s summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, the big achievement was asking the European Commission to come up with a “concrete implementation plan” to better coordinate the 27 national military forces. “This could have quite an impact,” said Claudia Major, a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs — which is true, but also an indicator of how slowly things move on the continent.

And without an independent military, Europe is going to continue to rely on the United States. The European Union states together spend about half of what the United States spends on its military. It would take the European states decades to catch up.

In other words, the current trans-Atlantic contretemps are real and will have a significant impact — with limits. Europe won’t be going its own way. Whatever its leaders and publics think about America, they need it, and so their quest for self-sufficiency will be more about leveling the playing field than leaving the game.
What really threatens the trans-Atlantic relationship is not the European quest for more self-sufficiency but the loss of trust that Ms. Merkel made so clear in her comments in Munich. We will continue to need the United States, but that need will be tempered by a worrying loss of trust in its leadership.
Over the next few years, trans-Atlantic relations will be defined by a single question: Which is more important, the practical administration of tangible mutual economic and defense interests, which will continue unimpeded, or the intangible but vitally important emotional bond, which is fast wearing away? To put it differently: How long can the United States and Europe work together without being friends?











Trump Advisers Wage Tug of War Before Decision on Climate Deal












 
President Donald Trump greeting American troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, Italy, last week. Other world leaders urged him during his trip not to pull out of the Paris climate accord. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A divided White House staff, anxious corporate executives, lawmakers and foreign leaders are fiercely competing for President Trump’s ear this week as he nears a decision on whether to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, the landmark agreement that commits nearly every country to combat global warming.
For a president not steeped in policy intricacies, the decision is vexing. On both sides are voices he profoundly respects: chief executives of some of the world’s largest companies urging him to remain part of the accord and ardent conservatives like Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, and Scott Pruitt, his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, tugging him toward a withdrawal from the 195-country agreement.
Exxon Mobil’s chief executive, Darren W. Woods, wrote recently that remaining in the agreement would be prudent, part of a nearly united corporate front. Within the administration, Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council; the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump; and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, say the United States can remain a party to the accord even as the administration moves to eviscerate the Obama-era climate policies that would have allowed the United States to meet its pollution-reduction targets under the agreement.
In a major climate speech Tuesday, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, exhorted world leaders to stick to their commitments to the accord, calling for “increased ambition” in the face of threats to disengage.

But the voices calling for a clean break from Paris are no less urgent, tugging at the president’s gut-level instincts by arguing that remaining a party to the agreement would shackle the American economy and betray his core supporters.

“Everybody who hates Trump wants him to stay in Paris. Everybody who respects him, trusts him, voted for him, wishes for him to succeed wants him to pull out,” said Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist who had earlier posted on Twitter the “Top 5 reasons USA should withdraw from Paris ‘climate’ debacle.”












 
Inside the administration, Jared Kushner, upper left, Ivanka Trump, center, and Rex W. Tillerson, center bottom, favor staying in the Paris climate accord. Credit Abir Sultan/European Pressphoto Agency

Mr. Trump said on Twitter over the weekend that he would announce his decision this week, and White House officials said the president spoke again Tuesday with Mr. Pruitt, who is responsible for unwinding the pollution-reduction efforts the prior administration had put in place during the negotiations in Paris.
“He wants a fair deal for the American people,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said of Mr. Trump. “He will have an announcement on that shortly.”

Mr. Trump has given few public indications of his thinking. Inside the West Wing, advisers have believed for weeks that the president was inclined to do what he promised during the campaign: In rallies, he repeatedly vowed to “cancel” what he called the job-killing agreement.

Mr. Trump’s daughter, however, has spent the past several weeks making sure that her father has heard from both sides, according to an administration official familiar with her efforts.

Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, a senior adviser in the White House, also favors staying as long as doing so does not legally limit the steps Mr. Trump is taking to move away from the restrictive environmental standards President Barack Obama put in place.
On the other side, Mr. Bannon has been one of the most aggressive advisers lobbying the president to pull out of the agreement. Since the administration is already moving quickly to reverse the policies implemented to comply with the accord, staying in would be pointless, he argues, but would risk costing the president support from his core supporters.

Meanwhile, advice is pouring in from outside the White House — much of it unsolicited.
On Capitol Hill, 22 Republican senators signed a letter urging the president to abandon the agreement. Staying in “would subject the United States to significant litigation risk that could upend your administration’s ability to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan,” they wrote.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, chided his colleagues from his party, saying on CNN that pulling out of the Paris accord would amount to “a statement that climate change is not a problem, is not real.”

Democratic senators took to Twitter — Mr. Trump’s favorite communication medium — over the weekend to make their case.
But the corporate voices for remaining in the agreement may be the most influential. “By expanding markets for innovative clean technologies, the agreement generates jobs and economic growth. U.S. companies are well positioned to lead in these markets,” a host of corporate giants wrote in full-page advertisements that ran recently in The New York Times, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Woods, the Exxon Mobil chief executive, wrote to Mr. Trump this month after the two men spoke by phone about investments that the company was planning in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a company spokesman, Alan Jeffers. As disagreement over whether to withdraw appeared to intensify, Mr. Woods wanted to communicate his stance directly.
“By remaining a party to the Paris Agreement, the United States will maintain a seat at the negotiating table to ensure a level playing field so that all energy sources and technologies are treated equitably in an open, transparent and competitive global market so as to achieve economic growth and poverty reduction at the lowest cost to society,” Mr. Woods wrote.

He included an earlier letter that the company had sent expressing support for the agreement to George David Banks, the special assistant to the president for international energy and environment, who had asked the company to share its views.
Environmentally oriented groups like Ceres, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions have brought together big companies like Apple, Ingersoll Rand, Mars, National Grid and Schneider Electric to appeal to the president to stay in. Many of them operate globally and worry that if the United States abandons the deal, it would be harder to operate in existing markets and break into new ones.












 
Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has urged a withdrawal from the climate pact. Credit Scott Olson/Getty Images

“It’s the right thing — we finally had a workable framework,” said Stephen Harper, global director of environment, energy and sustainability policy for Intel, who has attended several of the global climate meetings. “More than half of our market is outside the United States — our biggest market right now is China.”

Tom Werner, the chief executive of SunPower, a solar panel maker, sent letters to Mr. Trump and other administration officials arguing that companies have already made plans based on the Paris standards.
“It was important to speak up,” he said.
The global reaction has been fierce and almost exclusively in favor of keeping the United States in the 2015 agreement. In Europe last week, world leaders privately implored Mr. Trump not to bolt.

President Emmanuel Macron of France told reporters that he urged Mr. Trump not to make a “hasty decision.” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called her discussions with the president “very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying.”

The global pressure campaign continued on Tuesday with the speech by Mr. Guterres at New York University. While not specifically mentioning Mr. Trump in his speech, the secretary general of the United Nations referred to “those who might hold divergent perspectives” as he called for all countries to fulfill the promises they made. After the speech, in answer to a question from the audience, Mr. Guterres said he hoped that the United States would stick to the deal, or that American businesses would if the government did not.
“It is absolutely essential that the world implements the Paris Agreement — and that we fulfill that duty with increased ambition,” Mr. Guterres said. “The real danger is not the threat to one’s economy that comes from acting. It is, instead, the risk to one’s economy by failing to act.”

In the end, Mr. Trump’s decision may be influenced by voices closer to home. Critics of the pact said they hoped Mr. Trump would think less about world leaders and more about his voters.

“This is a huge deal to speak to the people who brung you to the dance,” Mr. Norquist said. If Mr. Trump pulls out of the Paris Agreement, he said, the message is this: “I kept my word.”












Investigation Turns to Kushner’s Motives in Meeting With a Putin Ally





The meeting came as Mr. Trump was openly feuding with American intelligence agencies and their conclusion that Russia had tried to disrupt the presidential election and turn it in his favor.

The Senate Intelligence Committee notified the White House in March that it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meeting.
On Friday, citing American officials briefed on intelligence reports, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that Mr. Kushner had proposed a secret channel and had suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The White House has not denied the Post report, which specified that Russian communication centers at an embassy or consulate in the United States were discussed as hosts for the secure channel.
It is not clear whether Mr. Kushner saw the Russian banker as someone who could be repeatedly used as a go-between or whether the meeting with Mr. Gorkov was designed to establish a direct, secure communications line to Mr. Putin.

The reasons the parties wanted a communications channel, and for how long they sought it, are also unclear. Several people with knowledge of the meeting with Mr. Kislyak, and who defended it, have said it was primarily to discuss how the United States and Russia could cooperate to end the civil war in Syria and on other policy issues. They also said the secure channel, in part, sought to connect Michael T. Flynn, a campaign adviser who became Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, and military officials in Moscow.

Mr. Flynn attended the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Kislyak.
Yet one current and one former American official with knowledge of the continuing congressional and F.B.I. investigations said they were examining whether the channel was meant to remain open, and if there were other items on the meeting’s agenda, including lifting sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed on Russia in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its aggression in Ukraine.

During the Trump administration’s first week, administration officials said they were considering an executive order to unilaterally lift the sanctions, which bar Americans from providing financing to and could limit borrowing from Mr. Gorkov’s bank, Vnesheconombank. Removing the sanctions would have greatly expanded the bank’s ability to do business in the United States.
In a statement on Monday, Ms. Hicks said that “Mr. Kushner was acting in his capacity as a transition official” in meeting with the Russians. Mr. Kushner has agreed to be interviewed by congressional investigators about the meetings, she said.























 
Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, in February. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In March, Mr. Gorkov said in a statement that his December meeting with Mr. Kushner was part of the bank’s strategy to discuss promising trends and sectors with influential financial institutions in Europe, Asia and the United States. That statement said he met with representatives of “business circles of the U.S., including with the head of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner.” At the time, Mr. Kushner was still running the company, which is his family’s real estate business.

Vnesheconombank has not responded to questions about which other financial institutions and business leaders Mr. Gorkov met with while in the United States.

Trying to set up secret communications with Mr. Putin in the weeks after the election would not be illegal. Still, it is highly unusual to try to establish channels with a foreign leader that did not rely on the government’s own communications, which are secure and allow for a record of contacts to be created.

But the Trump transition was unique in its unwillingness to use the government’s communications lines and briefing material for its dealings with many foreign governments, partly because of concern that Obama administration officials might be monitoring the calls.
In addition, Mr. Kushner disclosed none of his contacts with Russians or any other foreign officials when he applied for his security clearance in January. He later amended the form to include several meetings, including those with Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Gorkov, but it is unclear whether he told the investigators who conducted his background check about the attempts to set up a back channel. His aides have said his omissions from the clearance form were accidental.

The meeting with Mr. Gorkov is now being scrutinized by the F.B.I. as part of its investigation into alleged Russian attempts to disrupt last year’s presidential campaign, and whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers assisted in such efforts.
His bank is controlled by members of Mr. Putin’s government, including Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev. It also has long been intertwined with Mr. Putin’s inner circle: It has been used by the Russian government to bail out oligarchs close to Mr. Putin, and has helped fund the Russian president’s pet projects, such as the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.

Vnesheconombank has also been used by Russian intelligence to plant spies in the United States. In March 2016, an agent of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R., who was caught posing as an employee of the bank in New York, pleaded guilty to spying against the United States.
The spy, said Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, was under “the guise of being a legitimate banker, gathered intelligence as an agent of the Russian Federation in New York.”

Mr. Gorkov is a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service of Russia, a training ground for Russian spies. Though current and former Americans said it was unlikely that Mr. Gorkov is an active member of Russian intelligence, they said his past ties to the security services in Moscow were a reason he was put in charge of the bank.

In March, both CNN and the Post columnist David Ignatius reported that Mr. Kushner had met with Mr. Gorkov because he wanted the most direct possible contact with Mr. Putin.
But days earlier, responding to questions from The Times about the meetings with Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Gorkov, Ms. Hicks said the meetings were part of an effort by Mr. Kushner to improve relations between the United States and Russia, and to identify areas of possible cooperation.
After the first meeting with Mr. Kislyak, she said at the time, the Russian ambassador asked for a follow-up discussion to “deliver a message.” Mr. Kushner sent Avrahm Berkowitz, a longtime associate and now a White House aide. At that session, Mr. Kislyak told Mr. Berkowitz that he wanted Mr. Kushner to meet Mr. Gorkov, Ms. Hicks said.

Ms. Hicks did not say at the time why Mr. Kislyak had wanted to arrange a meeting between Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gorkov. But she said then that during Mr. Kushner’s meeting with Mr. Gorkov, there was no discussion about the Kushner company’s business or about American sanctions against Russian entities like Vnesheconombank.






















Continue reading the main story




Trump and Obama Visited Europe. One Got a Warm Welcome.


























 
Former President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany as they left the stage after a panel discussion at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Thursday. Credit John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
BERLIN — The contrast could not have been more stark.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany started Thursday in Berlin with the 44th president — the one she has called “dear Barack.” She spent the afternoon in Brussels with the 45th, Donald J. Trump, whose election she greeted with a stern reminder to respect shared values like equality and freedom.
Mr. Obama was in Berlin to help celebrate 500 years since Martin Luther’s Reformation, and received a rock-star welcome from tens of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate. It was all bonhomie, waves and warm words, as the former president praised Ms. Merkel’s “outstanding work, not just here but around the world,” particularly with refugees.
Barely two hours later, Ms. Merkel was among the European leaders who greeted Mr. Trump coolly at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where few casual words, let alone warm ones, were exchanged, as the new American president once again castigated allies for not paying their fair share of bills.
For Europeans, the juxtaposition served as an unavoidable reminder of the contrasts between the men — their personal styles, their relations with America’s allies and the values and priorities they embody.




It was also a demonstration, however coincidental, of the political shadow boxing that has found an unlikely arena in Europe, the new center of the contest between liberal democracy and far-right populism.

While Mr. Obama is the leader Europe prefers, Mr. Trump’s sudden ascendance has been seen as a challenge to America’s commitment to Europe, both its unity and its security, as well as the values that underpin the Western alliance.
The impression was underscored once again on Thursday when Mr. Trump demurred from explicitly endorsing America’s commitment to NATO’s principle of collective defense.
Neither president has remained aloof from Europe’s politics as the stakes have mounted this year with critical elections that have so far beaten back the far-right populism that helped thrust Mr. Trump to power last year.

Each man has, in fact, made his preferences clear at important moments in a kind of political proxy war. Mr. Obama, who remains wildly popular in Europe, was not shy about weighing in on France’s presidential race and endorsing the centrist reformer Emmanuel Macron, the winner.


























 
President Trump joined Chancellor Merkel and other NATO leaders at the dedication of a new headquarters in Brussels. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, lauded Mr. Macron’s far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, and posted a message on Twitter saying a terror attack in Paris in April would “have a big effect on presidential election!” Ultimately it did not.

For European leaders like Ms. Merkel, striking a balance between coaxing Mr. Trump into a deeper understanding with America’s traditional allies, while remaining true to their own political principles, is proving to be tricky.
German government officials say Ms. Merkel telephoned Mr. Trump when it became clear she would meet both presidents on the same day, to dispel any impression of a slight.
But the coincidence of scheduling — Mr. Obama’s invitation was issued a year ago, though accepted only last month — nonetheless presented Ms. Merkel with an opportunity for her to demonstrate that both sides need each other, and to show voters at home that she is a world leader as she campaigns for a fourth term.

“It is wonderful timing for her, a combination of good luck and good strategizing,” said Jan Techau of the Richard Holbrooke Forum at the American Academy in Berlin.

She was with Mr. Obama, “the good American who everyone is already missing,” and then with President Trump, “the other America which needs to be dealt with. And that is what is so crucial — of course she needs the relationship with Trump, but she can relativize that with pictures with Obama at the church meeting,” Mr. Techau added.


Yet, in Brussels, there were no evident breakthroughs.
As for Mr. Obama, usually trips by ex-leaders generate little public interest and consist of collecting obscure awards, like the media prize Mr. Obama was due to accept in the German spa town of Baden-Baden later on Thursday.
But while Mr. Obama has generally avoided making overtly political statements during his travels, his every movement, gesture and word have become objects of scrutiny at a highly politicized time.

Mr. Obama took his first step back onto the world stage earlier this month, at a food and technology conference in Milan, where he sprinkled his political stardust on Matteo Renzi, the center-left former Italian prime minister who is hoping for a comeback.


























 
Mr. Obama listening as Chancellor Merkel spoke during the event at the Brandenburg Gate. Credit John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The themes and settings of this week scarcely spelled neutrality, or reserve, analysts noted. “The entire week is more about symbolism than it is about substance,” Mr. Techau said. “It is state theater at the highest level.”

Mr. Obama did not mention Mr. Trump once during his 90-minute appearance in Berlin. But he did take some veiled swipes, noting, for instance, that when dealing with migration, “we can’t hide behind a wall,” alluding to Mr. Trump’s plan to build a wall along the Mexican border.
In Brussels, Ms. Merkel, was similarly discreet as she unveiled a piece of the Berlin Wall, whose fall in November 1989 marked NATO’s triumph in the Cold War against the Soviets.

“To find convincing answers for the future,” she said, “it is good to know what we achieved in the past.”

Mr. Trump, the New Yorker, presented a large chunk of the North Tower of the World Trade Center where the first hijacked plane made impact on Sept. 11, 2001, leading NATO allies for the first time to invoke the collective defense clause, Article V, which European leaders were hoping Mr. Trump would endorse.
Instead, Mr. Trump wasted no time in reminding Europeans that most of them are not paying their way in defense, and that this is “not fair” to the American taxpayer.

While the atmosphere in Brussels was tense, in Berlin Germans and foreigners exulted in the chance to see and hear Mr. Obama live.

Austin Joseph, 27, a native of Atlanta, said he left the United States two days after Mr. Trump’s election and swiftly settled in Berlin. “They talked to each other with decency and respect,” he said after Mr. Obama’s appearance with Ms. Merkel. “That is what we need more of nowadays.”

The very different sentiments evoked by Mr. Trump are equally clear.
“Donald Trump is not capable of being President of the U.S.A.,” wrote Klaus Brinkbäumer, the editor of Der Spiegel, in an extended editorial in the current issue.
The 45th president is neither intellectually nor morally equipped for the job, he wrote. “Trump must be removed from the White House. Fast. He is a danger for the world.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 26, 2017, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Welcoming Trump and Obama to Europe Presents a Study in Contrasts.

Leaks: A Uniquely American Way of Annoying the Authorities































 
Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain said she would “make clear” to President Trump the sanctity of shared intelligence. Credit Pool photo by Matt Dunham

WASHINGTON — British leaders were infuriated this week when the name of the Manchester concert bomber was disclosed by American officials, and further outraged when The New York Times ran investigators’ photographs of the bomb remnants. After Prime Minister Theresa May complained bitterly to President Trump, he denounced the leaks on Thursday and vowed to find and punish the leakers.
But when it comes to keeping secrets, Mr. Trump is hardly a model.
He blithely passed on to the Russians sensitive counterterrorism intelligence from Israel — and publicly seemed to confirm the breach after his staff denied it. Speaking by phone to the widely scorned president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, Mr. Trump revealed the presence of two nuclear submarines off North Korea, a highly unusual disclosure.
Is there something particularly American about leaking? Some national allergy to protecting government secrets?
Yes, in fact, there is. And whether you denounce that as a dangerous trait or accept it as an underpinning of democracy, it is unlikely to change, according to a range of former officials and students of government secrecy.


“To sum up what distinguishes the United States in a nutshell: It’s the First Amendment,” said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “The concept of a free press has been integral to the American idea since its inception. That’s not true even of other democracies. The press here even has the right to be irresponsible, which it sometimes is.”
The contrast with Britain, despite the shared democratic heritage, is particularly stark. Instead of the First Amendment, the British have the Official Secrets Act, which allows the government to ban in advance the publication of government secrets and prescribes punishments not just for leakers, but also for the journalists who publish the information.
Despite an unprecedented string of prosecutions for leaks under the Obama administration and a pledge on Thursday by Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to end “these rampant leaks that undermine our national security,” unauthorized disclosures of secrets are far more common in Washington than in London.
“I’m trying to think of a scandal over a leak from the intelligence service here, and I can’t think of one,” said John Lloyd, a veteran British journalist and a founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. “The culture of ‘you don’t need to know this’ hangs around in the U.K.”
He added that the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and in recent years even the National Security Agency had been far more open and involved in the political fray than their buttoned-up counterparts in Britain, known respectively as MI5, MI6 and Government Communications Headquarters.
Mr. Lloyd said the countersecrecy culture in the United States was shaped not only by the First Amendment, but also by the “quite radical” interpretation by the Supreme Court in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, which prohibited the government from ordering that leaked information not be published.
In that case, Max Frankel, who was then The Times’s Washington bureau chief, laid out in an affidavit a classic statement of the journalists’ position on leaks. “Without the use of ‘secrets,’” wrote Mr. Frankel, who later became the newspaper’s top editor, “there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted, either abroad or in Washington.”
For British journalists, Mr. Lloyd said, “probing into dark corners of the state here really takes its inspiration from the U.S.”
In the case of the Manchester bombing, Greater Manchester Police officials were angry when the name of the suspected bomber, Salman Abedi, leaked from the United States even before the coroner could match an identification card found at the scene to the bomber’s body, according to a British intelligence official.































The official said investigators feared that publishing Mr. Abedi’s name might prompt relatives and possible co-conspirators to evade the police, though that appears not to have happened. (It hardly needs saying, given British law, that the official spoke on the condition of anonymity even to explain British anger about the leaks.)
The Times’s posting on Wednesday of the photographs of the bomb components, including a battery and scraps of what seemed to be a backpack, compounded the investigators’ frustration, the official said. Those photographs bore a stamp saying “Restricted Circulation — Official Use Only,” a designation below “secret” and used in routine government business.
Across the American political spectrum, officials expressed sympathy for the British complaints. Mr. Trump called the leaks “deeply troubling,” and Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that “the British government has every right to be furious.”


John McLaughlin, a former acting director of the C.I.A., said he did not blame the British for temporarily halting routine intelligence sharing in response to the leaks. “It’s particularly damaging in a terrorism case,” he said.

But beyond such reactions to the current furor, the larger story of America and leaks is more complicated, especially since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Only because of illegal leaks of classified information did the public initially learn of the C.I.A.’s secret prisons and use of torture, the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping without court orders and the details of American drone strikes. Barack Obama ran for president in part against what he considered the excesses of counterterrorism programs under George W. Bush, as disclosed by leaks — but Mr. Obama’s administration then prosecuted far more leakers than all previous presidents combined.

In his short tenure, Mr. Trump may already have exceeded his predecessor’s contradictions. On the campaign trail, he cheered on the leak of Democratic emails, declaring, “I love WikiLeaks.” Those emails were unclassified, but WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of classified American documents.
In office, Mr. Trump has regularly fulminated against leaks, especially those about the F.B.I. and congressional investigations of contacts between his associates and Russia. “The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?” he asked on Twitter in February.

But the president shocked the Israelis by sharing highly sensitive information with visiting Russian officials about an Islamic State plot. After his aides refused to confirm that the source of the intelligence was Israel, Mr. Trump appeared to do so by publicly assuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, “I never mentioned the word or the name Israel.”

Similarly, when the Philippines released a transcript of a call between Mr. Duterte and Mr. Trump, some military officials were dismayed to see that the American president had discussed the general location of two nuclear submarines, part of a stealthy Navy force called “the Silent Service.” As in his meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, Mr. Trump’s motive appeared to be boasting of American abilities: “We have a lot of firepower over there,” he said, calling the submarines “the best in the world.”
Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of a 2010 book, “Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law,” said he saw no public benefit in getting ahead of British investigators, and agreed with Mrs. May’s condemnation of the bombing investigation leaks.

But as for the American president’s complaints about leakers, he said, “I think Trump is monumentally hypocritical.”
Mr. McLaughlin, the former C.I.A. official, said that Mr. Trump was “clearly unaccustomed to dealing with classified information,” and added, “That’s something we all have to learn — what you can say and what you have to hold back.”

On the other hand, Mr. McLaughlin said: “We shouldn’t make excuses for him. He’s president, for God’s sake.”































11 Completely Absurd Reasons To Love Washington

Yes, Washington is breathtakingly beautiful… and our scenery is diverse… and our produce is second to none. That being said, when you live in the Evergreen State long enough, you start to love it for its quirks. You develop quite a sense of humor about your home, and when people ask what you adore so much about it, you can hardly contain yourself.
Even if you don’t agree with these 11 reasons to love Washington, you must admit they’re valid, if not a bit silly.


































Whatever your reasons, it feels good to love the state you live in. Here are some slightly more traditional reasons everyone should adore Washington.






















































Kay Longhi’s parents, Francis and Patricia Longhi, at their north-end home on Cowan Road in the 1960s. (Courtesy Photo)

Coming Home: Betty MacDonald interview drew Longhis from Chicago

Editor’s Note: This story is the second in a series about the interesting ways current islanders came to end up on Vashon and how being on the island has changed the course of their lives.Islander Kay Longhi and her twin sister were only 6 years old when they moved to Vashon from Chicago in the 1950s, but Longhi, now in her 60s and still living on Vashon, can vividly recall the move and the events leading up to it.The decision to leave the Midwest was made by Longhi’s mother, Patricia Longhi, who Kay said was tired of living in cities and longed for the same kind of authenticity she witnessed on childhood vacations to a farm in Maine. Patricia found that opportunity in a 1954 radio interview with infamous island author Betty MacDonald.“Arthur Godfrey interviewed Betty MacDonald on his radio program. She talked about her book ‘Onions in the Stew,’ and it intrigued Mother,” Kay Longhi said. “When Daddy came home, she announced that we were moving to Vashon.”Kay called the early 1950s the “go-go time,” as the interstate system was being built and car culture was catching on. So, a couple months after hearing the interview, the family packed up their canary, dog and belongings — Kay said her mother was a “great animal lover” — and drove the more than 2,000 cross-country miles to Washington.“I remember crossing the border into Washington and remember standing in the back seat — those were the days where you could do that, no seat belts — and Dad stops the car in Spokane and says, ‘We’re here,’” she recalled. “I just remember thinking, ‘We came all the way for this?’ Spokane was not much to look at and didn’t quite meet the expectations I had.”The family’s journey obviously had to go a little farther west, but ended at a motel on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue. Kay and her family stayed there a week while her father found a job. Shortly after, the Longhi family moved to West Seattle.“A tiny house clinging to the hillside” is how Longhi recalled that first home.She and her sister started first grade in West Seattle before the family moved to a home on Cowan Road at the north end of Vashon the following year, 1955. Her mother fell in love with the island and never looked back.“We came to this island, which was secluded, out of the big city,” Longhi said. “We could see the mountains, as well as the sound. She would walk all over Vashon and loved being surrounded by water. She was very, very happy.”The home was also not far from MacDonald’s, although Kay says her mother did not find that out until after she bought the home.“I don’t know how she knew the house (Betty Macdonald’s) was close … but she was aware of it,” Kay Longhi said.And while her mother never met MacDonald, she did meet her sister, Mary Bard.Patricia Longhi went on to live in that same north-end home for 56 years. She moved out in 2011, three years before her death at the age of 91.“Mother was very much a loner in her heart. She liked solitude and wanted to be in the rugged, great outdoors,” Kay Longhi said before explaining that her mother grew up in an affluent family in New York City and was expected to become a socialite.“She abhorred the life,” Longhi said. “She loved the summers she spent on the coast of Maine. They always went to Laudholm Farm — a working farm with outbuildings that were rented out in the summer.”It was a lifestyle similar to that of the farm that Patricia Longhi found on Vashon, and that authenticity and community is what has kept Kay Longhi here. Longhi attended college in Portland, moved to Seattle, then moved to North Carolina and Mobile, Alabama, but because her mother was here, she followed what was happening on the island and would always come visit.“Because I was raised here, I never lacked a sense of home,” she said. “The community here has been my go-to place both mentally and physically. I’ve always been very centered. There’s a real sense of community and home I’ve never felt anywhere else.”Longhi moved back to Seattle in 1997. By 2008, her mother was in her 80s and suffering from dementia, and Kay moved into a small cabin on her mother’s property to take of her. She was eventually moved to a memory care home in 2011 and died in 2014, but her mother’s dream of rural living in the north-end home continues to this day, as her great-grandchildren are growing up in the same house.“My sister’s child, so my niece and her family, live there,” Longhi said. “Houses don’t come up for sale on Vashon because one generation leaves and another comes in.”But the Vashon home is not the only lasting evidence of Patricia Longhi’s search for a more rural, authentic life. During her life on Vashon, she discovered the Washington coast, and Kay said her mother saw many similarities between it and the Maine coastline of her childhood. She and a few other island families bought land and primitive cabins in the mid-60s on a strip of coast that is now part of the Olympic National Park.“The federal government came in and claimed eminent domain and declared it wilderness. There were two choices, either have the home torn down and take the money the government gives you, or have the government take it over when the owner dies. Mother put the home in her children’s names, so it’s still there.”The three-story cabin has no electricity and no running water. It’s tall and skinny, perched on a cliff so her mother could see the water below her.
“For Mother, it was the ultimate solitude,” Longhi said. “It was just about where she wanted to be.”



 






















Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

we share a very special gift by beloved and very popular Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honor member Letizia Mancino.


We know you'll enjoy it as much as we do.

Thanks a Million, dear Letizia Mancino.


You are an outstanding writer and artist.

We are so proud and happy to have you with us.

Letizia writes: One should not underestimate Wolfgang Hampel’s talent in speedily mobilizing Betty MacDonald’s friends.

We agree. Thank you so much dear Wolfgang Hampel for doing this. You founded Betty MacDonald Fan Club with four members.

Now we have members in 40 countries around the world. A dream came true.

Mary Holmes did an excellent job in translating this great story. 


Thank you so much dear Mary Holmes. 


We are really very grateful.

All the best to Letizia, Wolfgang and Mary and to all Betty MacDonald Fan Club fans from all over the world!

Lenard 






Following in Betty’s footsteps in Seattle:

or some small talk with Betty

Copyright 2011/2016 by Letizia Mancino
All rights reserved
translated by Mary Holmes

We were going to Canada in the summer. “When we are in Edmonton”, I said to Christoph Cremer, “let’s make a quick trip to Seattle”. And that’s how it happened. At Edmonton Airport we climbed into a plane and two hours later we landed in the city where Betty had lived. I was so happy to be in Seattle at last and to be able to trace Betty’s tracks!

Wolfgang Hampel had told Betty’s friends about our arrival.
They were happy to plan a small marathon through the town and it’s surroundings with us. We only had a few days free. One should not underestimate Wolfgang’s talent in speedily mobilizing Betty’s friends, even though it was holiday time. E-mails flew backwards and forwards between Heidelberg and Seattle, and soon a well prepared itinerary was ready for us. Shortly before my departure Wolfgang handed me several parcels, presents for Betty MacDonald's friends. I rushed to pack the heavy gifts in my luggage but because of the extra weight had to throw out a pair of pajamas!

After we had landed we took a taxi to the Hotel in downtown Seattle. I was so curious to see everything. I turned my head in all directions like one of the hungry hens from Betty’s farm searching for food! Fortunately it was quite a short journey otherwise I would have lost my head like a loose screw!
Our hotel room was on the 22nd floor and looked directly out onto the 16-lane highway. There might have been even more than 16 but it made me too giddy to count! It was like a glimpse of hell! “And is this Seattle?” I asked myself. I was horrified! The cars racing by were enough to drive one mad. The traffic roared by day and night.
We immediately contacted Betty MacDonald's friends and let them know we had arrived and they confirmed the times when we should see them.

On the next morning I planned my first excursion tracing Betty’s tracks. I spread out the map of Seattle. “Oh dear” I realized “the Olympic Peninsula is much too far away for me to get there.”
Betty nodded to me! “Very difficult, Letizia, without a car.”

“But I so much wanted to see your chicken farm”

“My chickens are no longer there and you can admire the mountains from a distance”

But I wanted to go there. I left the hotel and walked to the waterfront where the State Ferry terminal is. Mamma mia, the streets in Seattle are so steep! I couldn’t prevent my feet from running down the hill. Why hadn’t I asked for brakes to be fixed on my shoes? I looked at the drivers. How incredibly good they must be to accelerate away from the red traffic lights. The people were walking uphill towards me as briskly as agile salmon. Good heavens, these Americans! I tried to keep my balance. The force of gravity is relentless. I grasped hold of objects where I could and staggered down.
In Canada a friend had warned me that in Seattle I would see a lot of people with crutches.

Betty laughed. “ It’s not surprising, Letizia, walking salmon don’t fall directly into the soft mouth of a bear!”
“ Betty, stop making these gruesome remarks. We are not in Firlands!”

I went further. Like a small deranged ant at the foot of a palace monster I came to a tunnel. The noise was unbearable. On the motorway, “The Alaskan Way Viaduct”, cars, busses and trucks were driving at the speed of light right over my head. They puffed out their poisonous gas into the open balconies and cultivated terraces of the luxurious sky- scrapers without a thought in the world. America! You are crazy!
“Betty, are all people in Seattle deaf? Or is it perhaps a privilege for wealthy people to be able to enjoy having cars so near to their eyes and noses to save them from boredom?”

“When the fog democratically allows everything to disappear into nothing, it makes a bit of a change, Letizia”

“ Your irony is incorrigible, Betty, but tell me, Seattle is meant to be a beautiful city, But where?”

I had at last reached the State Ferry terminal.

“No Madam, the ferry for Vashon Island doesn’t start from here,” one of the men in the ticket office tells me. ”Take a buss and go to the ferry terminal in West Seattle.”
Betty explained to me “The island lies in Puget Sound and not in Elliott Bay! It is opposite the airport. You must have seen it when you were landing!”
“Betty, when I am landing I shut my eyes and pray!”

It’s time for lunch. The weather is beautiful and warm. Who said to me that it always rains here?
“Sure to be some envious man who wanted to frighten you away from coming to Seattle. The city is really beautiful, you’ll see. Stay by the waterfront, choose the best restaurant with a view of Elliott Bay and enjoy it.”
“Thank you Betty!”

I find a table on the terrace of “Elliott’s Oyster House”. The view of the island is wonderful. It lies quietly in the sun like a green fleecy cushion on the blue water.
Betty plays with my words:
“Vashon Island is a big cushion, even bigger than Bainbridge which you see in front of your eyes, Letizia. The islands look similar. They have well kept houses and beautiful gardens”.

I relax during this introduction, “Bainbridge” you are Vashon Island, and order a mineral water.

“At one time the hotel belonging to the parents of Monica Sone stood on the waterfront.”
“Oh, of your friend Kimi!” Unfortunately I forget to ask Betty exactly where it was.

My mind wanders and I think of my mountain hike back to the hotel! “Why is there no donkey for tourists?” Betty laughs:

“I’m sure you can walk back to the hotel. “Letizia can do everything.””

“Yes, Betty, I am my own donkey!”

But I don’t remember that San Francisco is so steep. It doesn’t matter, I sit and wait. The waiter comes and brings me the menu. I almost fall off my chair!
“ What, you have geoduck on the menu! I have to try it” (I confess I hate the look of geoduck meat. Betty’s recipe with the pieces made me feel quite sick – I must try Betty’s favourite dish!)
“Proof that you love me!” said Betty enthusiastically “ Isn’t the way to the heart through the stomach?”

I order the geoduck. The waiter looks at me. He would have liked to recommend oysters.
“Geoduck no good for you!”
Had he perhaps read my deepest thoughts? Fate! Then no geoduck. “No good for me.”

“Neither geoduck nor tuberculosis in Seattle” whispered Betty in my ear!
“Oh Betty, my best friend, you take such good care of me!”

I order salmon with salad.

“Which salmon? Those that swim in water or those that run through Seattle?”

“Betty, I believe you want me to have a taste of your black humour.”

“Enjoy it then, Letizia.”

During lunch we talked about tuberculosis, and that quite spoilt our appetite.

“Have you read my book “The Plague and I”?”

“Oh Betty, I’ve started to read it twice but both times I felt so sad I had to stop again!”

“But why?” asked Betty “Nearly everybody has tuberculosis! I recovered very quickly and put on 20 pounds! There was no talk of me wasting away! What did you think of my jokes in the book?”

“Those would have been a good reason for choosing another sanitorium. I would have been afraid of becoming a victim of your humour! You would have certainly given me a nickname! You always thought up such amusing names!” Betty laughed.

“You’re right. I would have called you “Roman nose”. I would have said to Urbi and Orbi “ Early this morning “Roman nose” was brought here. She speaks broken English, doesn’t eat geoduck but she does love cats.”

“Oh Betty, I would have felt so ashamed to cough. To cough in your presence, how embarrassing! You would have talked about how I coughed, how many coughs!”

“It depends on that “how”, Letizia!”

“Please, leave Goethe quotations out of it. You have certainly learnt from the Indians how to differentiate between noises. It’s incredible how you can distinguish between so many sorts of cough! At least 10!”

“So few?”

”And also your descriptions of the patients and the nurses were pitiless. An artistic revenge! The smallest pimple on their face didn’t escape your notice! Amazing.”

“ I was also pitiless to myself. Don’t forget my irony against myself!”

Betty was silent. She was thinking about Kimi, the “Princess” from Japan! No, she had only written good things about her best friend, Monica Sone, in her book “The Plague and I”. A deep friendship had started in the hospital. The pearl that developed from the illness.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Betty, that an unknown seed can make its way into a mollusk in the sea and develop into a beautiful jewel?” Betty is paying attention.

“Betty, the friendship between you and Monica reminds me of Goethe’s poem “Gingo-Biloba”. You must know it?” Betty nods and I begin to recite it:


The leaf of this Eastern tree
Which has been entrusted to my garden
Offers a feast of secret significance,
For the edification of the initiate.

Is it one living thing.
That has become divided within itself?
Are these two who have chosen each other,
So that we know them as one?

The friendship with Monica is like the wonderful gingo-biloba leaf, the tree from the east. Betty was touched. There was a deep feeling of trust between us.
“Our friendship never broke up, partly because she was in distress, endangered by the deadly illness. We understood and supplemented each other. We were like one lung with two lobes, one from the east and one from the west!”
“A beautiful picture, Betty. You were like two red gingo-biloba leaves!”

Betty was sad and said ” Monica, although Japanese, before she really knew me felt she was also an American. But she was interned in America, Letizia, during the second world war. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Betty, I never knew her personally. I have only seen her on a video, but what dignity in her face, and she speaks and moves so gracefully!”

“Fate could not change her”

“Yes, Betty, like the gingo-biloba tree in Hiroshima. It was the only tree that blossomed again after the atom bomb!”

The bill came and I paid at once. In America one is urged away from the table when one has finished eating. If one wants to go on chatting one has to order something else.
“That’s why all those people gossiping at the tables are so fat!” Betty remarks. “Haven’t you seen how many massively obese people walk around in the streets of America. Like dustbins that have never been emptied!” With this typically unsentimental remark Betty ended our conversation.

Ciao! I so enjoyed the talk; the humour, the irony and the empathy. I waved to her and now I too felt like moving! I take a lovely walk along the waterfront.

Now I am back in Heidelberg and when I think about how Betty’s “Princessin” left this world on September 5th and that in August I was speaking about her with Betty in Seattle I feel very sad. The readers who knew her well (we feel that every author and hero of a book is nearer to us than our fleeting neighbours next door) yes we, who thought of her as immortal, cannot believe that even she would die after 92 years. How unforeseen and unexpected that her death should come four days after her birthday on September 1th. On September 5th I was on my way to Turkey, once again in seventh heaven, looking back on the unforgettable days in Seattle. I was flying from west to east towards the rising sun.



Ein lyrisches Portrait von Hilde Domin
Anne MacDonald Canham

 




 









photos and graphics betty family betty and friend



Is this Mr. Tigerli?


Dare we face the question of just how much of the darkness around us is of our own making? - Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald ART Photos of ICONS Amazing Ladies Pinter Betty MacDonald Quotes Famous Quotes by Betty MacDonald Quoteswave 1950s showing Betty MacDonald descending a staircase and other images  betty macdonald betty bard macdonald wurde 1908 in boulder colorado  photos and graphics betty family betty and friend photos and graphics betty family betty grandchild photo of Betty MacDonald and two children in 1950 costumes Click images for alternate views BETTY MacDONALD PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED DOCUMENT 281143  photos and graphics betty family betty and don on vashon  
          



Betty MacDonald