Walking the Streets of Münster …

It is Election Tuesday
in the US and a man
from Arkansas is going
to upset the believers
it is only some old chums
and family ties that can
help you join the elite in or

at Washington DC where
you may wait forty years to
gain access to the seat in
the Oval Office with all
the blue red and white buttons
that on Capitol Hill were
easy to reach just a few

days back when desperadoes
clad as wild rebels after
their president had addressed
them on National Mall to
reward them for coming to
rescue the election that
had been lost on Tuesday 3rd
November when letters which
received early but counted last
would outnumber the votes cast

by many who doubted there
was a pandemic and turned
out in person while it is
still believed by seventytwo
per cent of those wearing

red ties that the results were
rigged so that now walking the
hall of the station at Leer
which I recall to have been
packed with people smokers too
in January ninetysix
I ponder the effects

if fake news deemed official
after four years a smoke-screen not
yet lifted just as my throat
though barely infected after
a day full of face to face
talks still feels the scratching of
whatever tobacco had

been exhaled in the same room
when Clinton was still in his first
term number forty-five not yet
fifty either and when to
go to Norden meant to enjoy
a holiday today I enjoy to go to work there.

Leer – Marienhafe – Norden, 12 January 2021

Working, dear readers, with the new up-dated programme means to follow the principle of "learning by doing", something I am going to write on soon enough for you to read another post since what I normally keep just for the school year, a day-by-day calendar detailing everything a teacher needs to keep his classes up-to-date as well as meetings and lists of marks etc etc, has become a proper journal of tuition because most registers are now being kept in empty classrooms. As a matter of fact, I throw such calendars into the bin once the two years after a year has finished with the summer report are up. This time, however, I am going to keep them to be able to recall later on what it was like teaching in the pandemic. If you have listened to the algorithmically produced read-out of this poem, please do not despair, any human being doing it live can do better than that.

So once again, I wish you all the best,

See you soon,

Jörg W. Rademacher