Retirement Ramblings

This morning, I had a leisurely breakfast with several people from the conference. Two of them had to rush off to a board meeting, so I had a long talk with the husband of my old friend whose acquaintance I renewed at the conference. He and I share some interests in community organizing/service learning/NGOs, so we talked a long time about our mutual interests. It made me remember how interested I was in all of this stuff until I got buried in politics and grading. It’s nice to find those interests again. I packed up, checked out, and made my way to the Munich train station, only two blocks away. I needed help with my train ticket since the ticket from Switzerland to Munich had been a train-and-bus combo that was complex to set up. This time, I got a ticket to keep my order in line, and saw one of the “helpers.” She was puzzled because she was able to put me on a train immediately – no bus – and it went to Switzerland via Austria. (I’d been told you couldn’t do...

Today we only watched TV for about 2 hours -   a short day.   It was the last day of seeing and discussing TV, after seeing 95 programs in all!   Wow! There also was a session today that demonstrated six programs that are coordinated with apps or video games or other social media. The purpose of one was to get kids outside in nature (and did so effectively).   One taught (older) children about teen sexual slavery, one addressed mental health, and one taught coding.   Then, before we left for the afternoon, we were given a preview of which three programs were finalists in the categories (identified by age and fiction/non-fiction) we had judged. We had a couple of hours free before we met again for the awards ceremony. I used that time to go to the BMW factory in Munich to find some merchandise for Ben.   AND I was successful. It was a good opportunity for me to see the BMW factory from the outside (although I didn’t take the tour) an...

This morning began with a discussion with a couple of old timers at this conference about why I feel right at home at this conference, and feel like such an anachronism at home in media conferences/departments. THIS conference is ALL children’s television, with no apps or social media. My experience at home and elsewhere is that everything – EVERYTHING – has to be social media. My question was why this conference isn’t an anachronism, give the changes in media.   The answer was twofold: 1) that this is a conference of broadcasters, who make the children’s TV/video, and 2) that the media children consume most are still video/TV, regardless how it is delivered. I haven’t felt so at home at a conference in a long time! Again, this was a 12-hours-of-TV day today.   The categories were children up to 6, non-fiction, and the same age group, part of the fiction. I found the programs particularly rich today, but the one that stood out for me was a program done...

I have just spent another 10-hour day watching television and discussing it.   If that sounds like being a couch potato, think again. This is serious, think-about-it watching, after which one must sound somewhat intelligent in a discussion. Highlights today were an excellent program set in Detroit during the Civil Rights movement, and another, quite well-done program (from Holland, I think) on a transgender kid. There were also some very nice portrayals of kids from different countries – a female soccer player from Denmark, an ice skater (a racer) from somewhere in Latin America, a kid with a new sibling with cerebral palsy, also from Latin America, and so on.   Great shows! Tonight was Norwegian karaoke night (after-viewing entertainment), so I left “early” – by 9 PM. Whew!

Today was another very full day – not at all a lazy Sunday of reading the paper . . . I had breakfast with an old grad-school friend, before arriving at the conference before 9:30 AM.   We watched and discussed all day, with the highlight, oddly enough, being a program on death for kids between 7 and 10, plus any number of others, on other themes, that were noteworthy. The European countries have made a number of good programs about refugee children and how they are becoming incorporated into their new societies. Granted – this reflects a best-case scenario, but we saw a show on a kid going through Ramadan in Denmark today that was superb! This evening, there was a wonderful presentation on using TV to encourage children to develop resilience, with clips from shows attempting to do just that. Also wonderful! And another friend, who has a daughter one year older than Ben, showed up and reminded me about a trip to the zoo with 2 children in strollers.   ...

I’m so glad I came to this conference!   I’m meeting all kinds of interesting people.   This morning, I received an email from a student of mine (from 1992!) who saw my name on the participant list and is here at the conference.   We were able to connect face to face today, which is fun.   She’s been a children’s TV producer in New York since she left SFSU. I wouldn’t have recognized her if she had not introduced herself. The way this conference works is that programs are put into categories by age and either fiction or non-fiction, and then they are screened back to back for the participants.   Today, we looked at ages 11-15 non-fiction in three sessions of about 2 ½ hours each, and then ended the (work) day with discussions led by pre-identified moderators each of whom was in one of six different rooms. The programs were fascinating – a lot of nicely done portrayals of kids with disabilities, some “adolescent issue” programs, and some others of various k...

It was another long day of looking at, and discussing, children’s programs.   I saw programs from Bangladesh and Namibia, as well as from countries with more obvious funding for TV.   The peoples who are here from all over the world are really fun to talk with.   This evening, the organization arranged a soccer game for participants – and the rest of us were invited to look on.   I ended up talking during the entire came with a woman from Chile and a man from Cuba. The Cuban talks fast and “eats his words,” so that was a real challenge, but the Chilean’s Spanish, from my perspective, is “normal,” so it was delightful for me.   Anyway, it was another enjoyable day.

Don’t worry! I’m not going give you a bunch of statistics from an academic conference. The Prix Jeunesse, which is the conference I’m attending Munich, begins tomorrow. But I was invited to a preconference workshop on children’s programming to address the issue of migration, particularly Arab migration, in Europe. I thought it sounded fascinating, so I signed up to come. The workshop was held within two blocks of the hotel, and it was attended by people from all over the world, not just Arabic countries. There were four Americans, and several people who had expertise in Arab culture or the Arab world, as well as mostly producers primarily from Europe. The organizers were from the UK, and they had done quite a bit of work in Arab countries. The next phase of their work is to look at what is available in Europe for children to address this issue of migration. Basically, the format of the day was to see video clips and to comment on them. I got a lot out of both ...

Here I am, back in Munich. I was here for Oktoberfest and to see the city at the end of September. I came out of the train station and recognized the place I had walked out of when I looked for the address of my hostel “just down the block,” only to find that it was several kilometers away. Well, this time I went from the first to a second train station, and my hotel was just around the corner – MUCH easier! And this time, I wasn’t carrying a sewing machine, either! After breakfast, I left my hotel in Winterthur, and walked to the train station.   A wonderful train ticketing agent helped me get my ticket credited to my Eurail pass, provided me with maps and explanations of both places – Zurich and Munich – I would end up, and got me on my way within a few minutes of arriving at the train station. I had looked at tickets on line, and was puzzled that the routes indicated I would have to change trains as many as FIVE times. It turns out that, because of the g...

Winterthur is home to a lot of museums, which is why I decided to come here. This is an old industrial town, largely supported by the textile industry, that has become the home to three major art museums, a photography museum, a science museum that sounds much like the Exploratorium, and a number of other smaller venues. Oskar Reinhart created two of the three art museums. He ran a company involved with cotton from India, and simultaneously collected art.   At some point, he focused all of his time on his art collection.   He gave part of his collection to the city, which created the Museum Oskar Reinhart, near the center of town. Later, he enlarged and adapted, for the displaying of art, the villa in which he lived, on the outskirts of town, on a hill overlooking the city. Upon his death, the villa was transformed into a museum for the rest of his collection, referred to as “Sammlung Oskar Reinhart.”   In addition, there is a third art museum in tow...

It looks as if I failed to do some careful editing yesterday. Oops! Anyway, this morning started with an excellent breakfast at the hotel. There were some people also eating breakfast who were of Indian nationality and were speaking American English. On a hunch, I asked them where they were from, and they were from San Jose. They couldn’t believe that I was from San Mateo! They had a couple of darling kids with them, and the kids were fun to watch. There was a conversation about Star Wars, and whether dinosaurs were a part of Star Wars -   and then whether robots were a part of Star Wars. And something was said about being like a good dinosaur and eating breakfast properly. Whatever works . . . Anyway, I took public transportation back into St. Gallen, and stored my suitcase and backpack at the railroad station. Then I went directly to the Textile Museum. St. Gallen is known for textiles, particularly embroidery. The area around Lake Constance, otherwise kn...

What I didn’t say about Chur is that it is a town surrounded by mountains. Every which way you look, there are mountains on all sides. Chur looks Swiss to a certain extent, but it also looks Eastern European. There are buildings with onion-shaped domes, and there are other architectural details that I don’t have the vocabulary to describe. Even so, Chur looks really different from what I’ve experienced before. The hotel had a great breakfast, and after leaving my suitcases there for safekeeping, I went off to see the art museum. One thing to know about Chur is that it’s where Giacometti grew up. When I went to the art museum, it was pointed out that there are four Giacomettis - and I should realize that! All are from Chur. The Giacometti who is most famous is Alberto, whose father, Giovanni, was a painter. Giovanni’s cousin, Augusto, also was a painter. Alberto had a brother, Diego, who was also a painter. There were also two other children in the family – Bruno, an architect, and s...

Here I am in the town of Chur (pronounced “Kur”) in a room about the same size as the room in the YMCA my student and I stayed in in New York City. That means it’s about the size of two closets, or there is room for a single bad and space to walk by it. Actually, it’s quite a comfortable room, and it even has a TV, as well as a sink. But let me tell you how I got here. This morning, I got up in Lugano and left the house with the mystery host (I still haven’t met her) and schlepped my suitcase DOWN to the train station. I had breakfast there and then got on a bus to take me to the Bernina Express. The bus traveled from Lugano across a piece of Italy to Tirano, which is in Italy. There, I got on a train call the Bernina Express. This train, which runs between Tirano in the south and Chur in the north, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The route takes you across the Bernina Mountains and the Bernina Pass, and past the Bernina Glacier. All of t...

Would you believe I’m starting my second night here and I still haven’t met the host?   It seems so weird to open your house to rentals but not have any contact with the people who are renting, not even through a hired receptionist. Oh well… it seems like a good place, and I was certainly comfortable last night.   I started the day with no particular plans beyond getting some caffeine in my system. This particular place doesn’t serve breakfast, so I walked for a while until I found a place that would serve coffee and at least a roll. Thus fortified, I went on to look for an open-air market that apparently happens on Fridays. It turns out it’s mostly food - like a small farmers’ market - with a few other things. Since I have become used to a rather large Swiss breakfast, I decided to allow myself a cannoli. (This really is an Italian area.)   Yum! I sat and ate it by the lakeshore, and watched a machine that looked like a steam shovel in the front...

Do these two names, taken together, confuse you? They are so similar to the “foreign” ear, and I have been confusing the two names – and towns – since I began contemplating coming to this (Italian) part of Switzerland. Anyway, today, I was in both places! Today began in Locarno. I had breakfast at my hotel, left my suitcase there for safekeeping, and went off to find the funicular that would take me up to the Santuario della Madonna del Sasso. I wandered around town looking for the entrance to the funicular, and had trouble finding it. On the way, I saw a beautiful church and a lot of great scenery. Finally, I found the entrance, got in the (cable?) car, and went up the mountain. At the top was a beautiful view of Lucarno, and a fantastic church and monastery. The trip was well worth the trouble of finding the funicular, if only for the view of the lake, but the church was pretty spectacular, too. I realized when I got to the top the mountain, that the walk up wou...

Today began in an area of chalets, heavy pine forests and snow-topped mountains above them. Typically, you see houses with lace curtains, and abundant wood for the fireplace stacked up outside. This evening, I’m in a Mediterranean-like climate, complete with palm trees, and I have just been out for a boat ride on the lake. How things could change so much in a train ride of less than four hours is beyond me, but it certainly is the case! After another wonderful breakfast, I got on the train in Mörel. The ticket taker, a young woman in her mid 30s, was able to sell me a ticket all the way to Locarno. I had anticipated having to get off and on the train several times, and having to buy another machine ticket at my first stop. Instead, she made the whole thing easy. In addition, she helped me out quite a bit in terms of changing trains and finding the right platform. At one point, she was talking animatedly on her phone, and I didn’t recognize the language she wa...

My plan this morning was to go to the Aletsch Glacier, a UNESCO world heritage site.. That meant taking the train from Mörel to Fiersch and then taking the only gondola ride up and down the mountain available at this time of year. I had a terrific breakfast in my hotel. It’s amazing to me that the Swiss put out a kind of buffet breakfast with beautiful breads, scrumptious cheeses, and always some fruit, as well as coffee served the way you want it. They also offer a soft-boiled egg.   In fact, this morning the egg was do-it-yourself. (So I did!) I’m going to be spoiled, although I long for coffee and the newspaper in my PJs before I have to make an appearance anyplace. I went to the train station and rode to Fiersch, where I arrived early for the gondola. That meant I could walk around the town and get a little bit of a sense of it. I walked into the church, took some pictures, and continued to be amazed at all the flowers everywhere. Finally, it was time ...