Picto Diary - 04, 05 (AM) May 2016 - Prague
Stephen D. Taylor was feeling hungry at InterContinental Praha with Margaret Taylor.
Yesterday at 7:06am · Prague ·
Above: Facebook post. Prague, Czech Republic. 04 May 2016
Driver Learnings 04 May 2016:
Park City to Salt Lake Airport driver:
I was a school teacher for 20 years in Davis County. I didn't retire, I had a few more years to go. Still, since I had worked for the state before I started teaching I had vested retirement income.
I was a math teacher in middle school. There were too many risks to being a male teacher. The girls. A teacher never knows when he will be accused of some form of harassment or abuse. You have to be very careful. A male teacher has to always ensure that he is never in the presence of a female student without another adult present.
On the floor of the classroom, I taped in a line dividing the students from my desk. I asked that the students not cross the line. Twenty years ago when I started teaching fearing female false accusation was unheard of. Now its common.
Driver from Prague Airport to Intercontinental Hotel:
Q. Does the Czech republic receive a lot of immigrants or refugees from the Middle East?
A. No. They don't want to come here. Czech Republic has no welfare system to sustain them. There is not money for them. They want to go elsewhere, like Germany, where they can receive benefits from the state.
The population here is more homogenous than is seen in other countries.
Above: Some of handwritten names of 77,297 Czech Jews sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other camps on wall of Pinkas Synagogue, Prague, Czech Republic. 05 May 2016.
Czech Jews were especially hard hit by the Holocaust. More than 155,000 of them passed through the nearby Terezin camp alone. Most died with no grave marker, but they are remembered here on the walls of Pinkas Synagogue.
Jews first came to the Czech area of central Europe in the 11th century. Pre WWII there were 150K Jews resident in Czechoslovakia, most in Prague. Today there are 3000 "registered" Jews in the Czech Republic, 1800 of which live in Prague.
The several historic synagogues of the Jewish Quarter are maintained financially by contributions from US Jewish organizations, Israel, and the Czech government. The several synagogues in the Prague Jewish Quarter are among the most ancient structures in the city. The Old-New Synagogue dates to 1270.
Above: TIMDT observes impressionistic (apropos of Kafka's fantastic writing style) statue of Franz Kafka. Jewish Quarter, Prague, Czech Republic. 05 May 2016.
Franz Kafka[a] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic,[3] typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers,[4] and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.[5] His best known works include "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.[6]
Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education he was employed with an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime: the story collections Betrachtung (Contemplation) and Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), and individual stories (such as "Die Verwandlung") were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. Kafka's unfinished works, including his novels Der Process, Das Schloss and Amerika(also known as Der Verschollene, The Man Who Disappeared), were ordered by Kafka to be destroyed by his friend Max Brod, who nonetheless ignored his friend's direction and published them after Kafka's death. Wikipedia
Above: Bernie Sanders takes coffee at a Prague sidewalk café. Prague, Czech Republic. 05 May 2016.
Above: Czech millennial girls enjoy a smoke outside Jerusalem Synagogue in The New Town. Prague, Czech Republic. 05 May 2016.
Above: Our group with guide Slavska, Wenceslas Square, Prague, Czech Republic. 05 May 2016.
Bishop, looking out "upon the Feast of Stephen."
Wenceslaus I (Czech: Václav [ˈvaːtslaf] ( listen); c. 907 – September 28, 935), Wenceslas I, or Vaclav the Good[1] was the duke (kníže) of Bohemia from 921 until his assassination in 935, in a plot by his brother, Boleslav the Cruel.
His martyrdom, and the popularity of several biographies, quickly gave rise to a reputation for heroic goodness, resulting in his being elevated to sainthood, posthumously declared king, and seen as the patron saint of the Czech state. He is the subject of "Good King Wenceslas", a Saint Stephen's Day carol. Wikipedia
Addendum:
Thought you might enjoy couple pictures for my part of the state. Also I'm curious if you have ridden the road to Los Alamos national Lab. The roads very nice and Los Alamos is beautiful. It would extend the ride to Cortez maybe 100 miles from Albuquerque. I'm planning to ride with you from Albuquerque back to Park City June 1
ITYW,
San Angelo, TX
Looking forward to riding together!
As I was exercising on my bike in the gym, I saw an interesting show. On Bikers, and the town of Sturgis and the food scene there. Have you ever go one to that rally?
Bridge,
Palm Beach, FL
Went there once... for purposes of sociological study, 18 years ago.
....couldn't agree more with Hoops and Dr. Bill. Trophies should be earned fair and square by being a winner or a runner-up and not just given out to the young for merely participating or showing up. Life in the real world doesn't work like that!
As a former selector for ELGA, I found that the worst thing was the "pushy parent syndrome" - mums or dads popping out from behind a tree to tell me how wonderful at golf their daughters were! Those poor girls' handicaps were, very sadly, their parents.
Eton Mum
Altausee, Austria
How can trophies be awarded when there is no score and and no one keeps track of wins and losses? This is why the kids got participation trophies. I would have concerns if they got participation trophies in a league that kept track of wins and losses.
Rudy Jr.
Salt Lake City, UT
Keep score?
When coaching pre-high school kids, over 16 years, in baseball and basketball, there was no question to me that the child's best interests were served by banning all parents from games.
I spent much baseball time with Frank Bartolotta, a baseball savant, former instructor with the Yankees, WWII vet, who helped some 400-500 kids get baseball or softball scholarships to college.
He had a procedure at his winter indoor baseball clinics which I first saw at his clinic for 7 and 8 year olds. Fathers would show up with their gloves, very enthusiastically ready to get involved and help out Frank with their own baseball experiences. Frank was very gracious to the fathers and would direct them over to an area so that they could meet the other fathers as Frank prepared for the clinic.
When ready, he directed Kenny, in his gravelly three-pack-a-day voice -- "close it up." The fathers were all in a chain link-fenced protective area, really an 8 by 8 cage, and Kenny would then close and lock the door
to the cage.
Frank would then commence his intense, very instructive, precise, kids-in-action clinic. The fathers were somewhat forlorn looking as they stood in the locked cage still holding their gloves. They were now passively watching a remarkable instruction for their kids and accepted their status. I was fortunate to be one of Frank's assistants, I followed his instructions and his directions and learned, so I was outside the cage.
Hoops