10/18/09
Food Galore!
Arriving in the USA in 1955, from war ravished Europe felt like being in the promised land, the land of milk and honey. At that time Europe was one generation behind the US. A couple of years before that year the Eisenhower administration signet, the highway act. Modern interstate highways were built crossing the nation from east to west and north to south and yearly more and more highways were added to the network. Returning veterans from the war were helped to get a college education and to build entry level houses. The sleeping suburbs were catching up with the cities and new buildings and factories were popping up all over the country. Thousands of jobs were created and everybody had high expectations. It is easy to get used to a good life and what everybody wanted was more of it. As glamorized by Hollywood films the American dream required more than just houses. It required modern appliances and flashy cars in the driveways.
One bread winner did not suffice. To achieve all that in a great hurry, more and more housewives left the kitchen to find outside work The traditional life styles of the past generations looked completely outdated. The capitalistic market economy triumphed here and started spreading all over the world. It lead eventually to the collapse of communism in Europe and a new world order was established.
As a naturalized citizen, I was more than happy to live with my family in this dream world but eventually I felt that a price had to be paid for all the cornucopia . To keep the shelves of the spreading supermarkets filled, eighteen-wheelers were rolling day and night. New franchised food stores popped up like mushrooms after a warm summer rain. People were always in a hurry and impatient to wait for anything. Instant gratification was the order of the day. The new generations were nourished or malnourished on greasy burgers, hot dogs and salty French fries, potato chips and washed down with soda pops.
The daughters could not learn cooking from the mothers because the mothers were reared on junk food already. When nobody was watching , the art of cooking became a faded memory not only in homes but in restaurants as well. The restaurants had to compete with the fast food outlets and the menus had to be simplified reflecting the trends in the fast food chains. Qualified help was hard to find and truthfully a well qualified cook in the kitchen was no more required. What greasy spoon restaurant could afford to pay the salary of a culinary institute graduate. Most of the foods were precooked at far away places in gigantic food factories and delivered by the ever rolling eighteen-wheelers.
As a retired design engineer I was always fascinated to watch on TV those highly automated food factories. A never ending convoy of trucks loaded with potatoes arrive at one end of the factory and emerge out the other end. Thus another convoy of trucks enter loaded with refrigerated boxes of French fries, driving in a hurry to fill the orders of thousands of fast food establishments all over the country.
And what about the burgers? That’s another sad story.
To satisfy the American’s insatiable hunger for hamburgers, big feeding lots in a couple of states were fattening up cattle with a scientifically concocted formula of feed containing a great deal of grain among other things, not a natural food source for cattle. The formula made it sure that the animals reached their desired weight in the shortest possible time. Seeing the success of the American feed lots, a number of south American countries were eager to embark on the same gravy train. To create pastures for cattle they cut and burned virgin forests in complete disregard to the natural order of things. We can follow the cattle from the feeding lots to the slaughter houses but refrain from going any further. Enough to say, that the animals end up as slabs of beef traveling on hooks to further processing. The final products are thousands of pounds of frozen beef patties packaged in boxes . From there the familiar eighteen-wheelers deliver them to their final destinations.
All other mass produced food items followed the same routes. I found it fascinating to watch on TV, the engineering marvels of automation, the rapidly moving conveyor belts loaded with perfectly aligned cookies, breads and other bakery products, stopping from time to time so the mechanical devices could reach them, turn them or manipulate them in many ways. When everything is boxed and properly labeled, our reliable eighteen-wheelers step in to distribute the products all over the country. The Federal Food and Drug Administration has inspectors at every step to insure that the products are safe for public consumption. What a triumph for automation and mass production. It certainly looks like a win win situation. However, on closer examination we find a fly in the ointment.
Mass production of food is a leveler The end product is bland and one without high or low points. The high points were previously produced in the kitchens and in the restaurants where experts delivered excellent products using skills passed down to them from generation to generation. The only advantage of today’s mass produced food is that it is plentiful, safe and accessible to everybody. You can forget about taste and quality.
Another sad story is the production and distribution of fruits and vegetables. The harvesting of fruits and vegetables previously was expensive and work intensive. It was a very uncertain business relying mainly on migrant workers. Then enter the American engineer. Engineers and agricultural scientists were called to try to solve the problem. The scientists determined that most fruits and vegetables, even before they reach full ripeness can be easily bruised and damaged during harvesting and transportation. The ideal situation would be to offer the customers in the market place a fully ripened product. However, that is impossible.. The scientists offered the following solutions. Harvest the produce long before ripening or genetically engineer them to be tougher. It was concluded that it has to be one or the other before the engineers could be called to attack the problem.. As expected the engineers came up with automatic or semi- automatic machines which could harvest the product rapidly and safely for a reasonable price.
That’s what we find today in the supermarkets. Mountains of beautifully displayed apples, pears polished in rainbow colors a fiesta to the eyes, but practically inedible.
Today nobody has the skills or time for cooking. None-the-less, all kitchens are equipped with pots and pans galore and with most up to date appliances. At meal times all the restaurants are jammed. You have to wait for a table and to add insult to injury,
have to pay an exorbitant price for a forgettable meal. Is there a solution for this problem? No, there is no solution. Just grin and bear it.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
All About Food.
All about Food! 10/13/09
In the course of my life I had the good fortune to enjoy and appreciate good food in many countries and states on both sides of the Atlantic. I was born in a country where food was scarce but the art of cooking was highly esteemed and was passed down from one generation to another. As the result the food was well prepared and it was a joy to consume it. Presently I live in a rich country where food is plentiful but the art of cooking became a lost art. It looks like we can’t have everything.
In the twentieth century the Industrial Revolution brought about monumental changes in the lives of it’s citizens, mostly for the better, in countries like Great Britain, where it has started and in other major European countries like, Germany and France.
The Industrial Revolution did not penetrate the smaller countries which after the two World Wars became even less consequential. There we find mostly agricultural societies where the nobility had large land holdings and the rest of the society tried to eke out a living on the margins.
In those marginal countries about 80 percent of the population was laboring in the fields. The rest found employment in the administrations of the state, counties and cities. Many found employment by the railroads, the lumber industry and with the armed forces. There was only one bread winner in most families except in agriculture. The job of raising the families, cooking and cleaning fell on the wives. To provide the family with nourishing meals on very limited incomes required experts in the kitchens. Fortunately the art of cooking was passed down from mother to daughter for many generations. To dine outside was an exception not a rule. On the rare occasions when the family could go out to dine they were not disappointed. The menu was long and comprehensive, the price on the high side and the waiting long. Refrigeration was practically non existent so the meals had to be cooked on the premises and that meant some animals had be slaughtered and vegetables picked from the garden or taken from the root cellar and wine from the wine cellar. However, bottled beer was already available . The waiting was worthwhile. The cooking was done by cooks who were doing it for a living, and not by a drifter who was hired yesterday. At home, the wife had to use her expertise and ingenuity to come up with nourishing and good tasting meals. She was up to the task. She could make miracles with the fresh vegetables and the family secret seasonings. Meat was expensive and beef almost unheard of. Refrigeration as we know it did not exist but most restaurants had ice boxes. Pork, fish and poultry were reasonably priced and more accessible
In our city there was a garden restaurant which I’ll never forget. Tables were set up under large shady trees and a string orchestra was playing in the background. As a boy I stopped often there and peeked across the top of the fence. While the orchestra was playing couples stood up from the tables and danced to the captivating sound of the violins and the bases. Wafts of mouth watering smell of food was hanging over the place. To me as a boy it was a heaven. That restaurant provided take out food as well. The food was placed in about two quart size blue outside white inside pots and the pots were slipped into a rack one on the top of another with a carrying handle on the top. What a treasure must have been in those pots .
When my father retired to a place of his birth, a God forsaken village in the middle of nowhere we entered into a different style of life and eating . As a boy I felt we moved into hell. The city which we left behind at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains had a character, set among rolling hills with the blue mountain ranges giving it a picture card framing . Our house was in a poor subsistence farming village surrounded by many similar one horse villages. For us new comers the village posed a grim picture, but on closer examination we found out that our neighbors led a contented, perhaps happy lives, since they did not know anything else. The village had one store with an attached community hall and one Reformed church up on a hill.
On week ends the community hall was filled with festively dressed young people vigorously dancing to the tune of a volunteer orchestra. The sound of the music filled the whole village.
There was no electricity, no telephone, no radio, and doctors and hospitals were miles away. Public communication was done by the village’s crier. It came handy that in the center of the village was a tall hill. The crier climbed to the top of the hill and in a loud voice made his announcements. If a farmer lost a cow because of a broken leg or something his loss was a big gain for the village.. The crier announced from the hill that fresh beef was available at such and such address. Come and get it because the meat wouldn’t keep longer than a day. Fresh beef at last. The main sources of protein were pork and poultry. Most everybody raised and fattened a pig. The slaughtering day was a kind of fiesta for the friends of the family except for the pig. The poor animal was slaughtered and laid on a big pile of straw and set on fire. When the fire was out, all the pig’s hair was gone. The butcher with a very sharp knife, gave the pig a shave and started dismembering the carcass. With shirt sleeves rolled up, everybody got his job cut out to render the pig into the final delicious pork products. The fat was rendered into lard and put in a big enameled pot. That was the pride of the house wife. Every part of the pig was used. The intestines were cleaned and the ground and well seasoned meat was funneled into them. Three kinds of sausages were prepared with meat, liver or blood. Eventually the sausages and the hams were smoked. The pig’s feet, ears and skin parts were boiled in a big pot and after a due time, removed from the fire and ladled out into many large soup dishes and placed outside for cooling. Needless to say, the work was accompanied with a great deal of hilarity and joking and the mood was enhanced by the consumption of quite a few bottles of wine. When evening came, the dishes were set out for cooling, and became jellied into a humongous mass called “Sulze” in German. Everybody grabbed a dish and after pouring a few drops of vinegar on it, consumed the delicious sulze. The products of the slaughtered pig helped the families get through the winter right into the coming spring.
I attended high school, and boarding school in a nearby city about 30 miles distance from home. When I went home for Christmas I knew that mother’s cooking masterpieces were waiting for me. Her specialty was stuffed cabbage. I have to digress to explain what kind of cabbage I am talking about. Heads of cabbages with the outside leaves removed and the core cut out and filled with salt were placed layer by layer into a big barrel up to the very top. The barrel was filled with water and covered with fitted boards. For pressure big stones were laid on the boards. All this of course has taken place in the cellar. Eventually fermentation had taken place. There was a faucet in the bottom of the barrel and the fluid was drained and recirculated a few times. In a couple of weeks the sauerkraut was ripe. The ripe cabbage heads were very tender and slightly translucent and were used mainly as a condiment accompanying the meals.
To make stuffed cabbage mother took a head and removed several leaves. Chopped meat seasoned with God knows what, formed into elongated balls and the kraut leaf was wrapped around it and secured with a string. Next she used several heads and cut them into fine pieces just like the kraut you buy in stores. Mother had a big stoneware pot with perhaps two gallons capacity. She put a layer of sauerkraut on the bottom followed with a layer of the stuffed cabbages and so forth until the pot was full. The whole contraption was subject to slow cooking through out the night and was declared finished in the morning. I forgot to mention that she put a couple of ham hocks as well into the mix. The result was out of this world. Today with great longing I look back to something unobtainable in my present life.
With the vacation over I had to return to the boarding school and resign to a very lean life style. As a growing boy I was always hungry. We were served three meals a day over there. For breakfast we got one cup of milk with a slice of bread.. We got a satisfying meal for lunch. From lunch at twelve it was a long time to supper at 7 PM. At 5 PM we got a break from the study hall and had time to look up our lockers in search for something to bite into. Friends from better to do homes had their lockers stocked with non-perishable foods like bacon, sausage and bread and so fort. My locker was most of the time, empty. How I longed just for a piece of dry bread. But it passed.
For reasons too complicated to explain at this juncture, I had to leave my home and my mother in hurry to save my life. I found myself in Budapest early in September, 1944. At this time about 600 miles to the east, the Germans were holding the line against the highly motorized Russian forces but their resistance was crumbling. It was still a sunny September in Budapest with not much sign of the war but we all knew that we are living on borrowed time. As a green boy from the hinterland, I was awe-struck by the wonders of the capitol city. The street cars, the famous bridges crossing the Danube from Buda to Pest and the other wonders of a big city. I was never further away from home than perhaps 100 miles. Fortunately I had some money in my pocket. My mother turned over all her Hungarian Pengos to me because under the inevitable Russian invasion her money would be worthless.
In a nutshell, I quickly found lodging and work in the city, and had a chance to sample some good food in the restaurants, not to mention the terrific and reasonably priced wines. My honeymoon in the city did not last very long. By December of 44 the victorious Russian forces were ready to invade the city. I did not wait for them but high- tailed it out of the city toward Vienna.
Going from Budapest to Vienna at this time was like jumping from the pan into the fire. The Germans annexed Austria in 1939, and were about to lose it again. Vienna was a very unhealthy place to be in this point in time. The war was going full blast as we experienced daily bombing from the American bombers.. I took refuge several times at the sound of alarm in one of the many high-rise bunkers. The walls were shaking from the noise of the flack on the top of the bunker or the bombs exploding nearby. It certainly was not the time to enjoy the pleasures of gay Vienna..
As refugees, my German wife and I received German food rationing cards in the restaurants. We had to surrender a number of coupons depending on the choice of the menu selected.. What was available was plentiful and selections were under very appealing names like “Stamgericht und Hausgericht”. They contained only vegetables like boiled cabbage, many kinds of beets, carrots and all sliced and garnished with dressings. It was filling but not very nutritious. The rationing cards contained very few meat coupons, so they had be used very judiciously.
During my short stay in Austria, I was gainfully employed in many odds and ends’ jobs such as waiter, machine shop worker and so forth and drifted from one place to another. In the village named Weibern, my good fortune had brought me together with my future wife Mia. She was a beautiful German Red Cross nurse who was attached to a camp of juveniles who were evacuated from the western part of Germany to be out of harms way. Later on when the war ended around May of 45, she was expelled from Austria along many German nationals. I had met Mia in my capacity as a translator from Hungarian to German. We took a liking to each other and resolved to remain together. The American army provided a truck to convey the German evacuees from Weibern to Munich. It posed a big problem for Mia and I. Since I was labeled as a displaced person and was not eligible to go to Germany, Mia and I agreed that if I could make it, we would meet in front of the Munich railroad station. The odds were against us. To make a long story short, by hitch hiking and walking, I illegally crossed the Austrian German border at Passau and eventually reached Munich. I’ll never forget the sight when I walked into the city. It was in ruins. Most houses were left with just the chimneys standing. I was lingering in front of the railroad station when suddenly a big American truck arrived. There was Mia on the top of it . We were overwhelmed with joy and took it as a sign that our good fortune meant us to remain together. There was no regular railroad traffic any more between Munich and Essen about 500 Km. distance in the northern part of Germany. We managed to secure a passage on a freight train and had to climb on the top of logs with our bundles of luggage and to hang on for our dear life. This was my grand entrance to Germany. Eventually we arrived in Essen and when we went to her mother’s address we learned that her apartment complex was bombed out. Her father died before the war. Her mother was alive but relocated to a small village in Westphalia.. Our journey continued and we arrived on our final destination to Rahden in Westphalia. Before I digress any further away from the original purpose of the subject matter, I have to squeeze in a critical period of our life. To her great delight and my distress, Mia,became pregnant and we had to get married in a hurry. The local magistrate told me that I couldn’t marry because as a Hungarian national by Hungarian law I was underage at twenty years old. I had no guardian. I had escaped from my home with only the shirt on my back without any documents in my possession. The good magistrate finally relented and nominated himself as my guardian and as such he gave me his approval. We married on September 6 and our son Tom was born on September 29th. I found lodging and employment in Rahden. We spent the next ten years there so I had ample time to learn the language and immerse myself in German culture.
Germany in 1945 was a country in disarray. The war was lost and millions of refugees and people evicted from the former German territories on the east had to resettle. The cities and villages were full with forcibly resettled new comers. It wasn’t a question how best prepare food but where to find it. You only got what the food rationing card allowed you to get. After Mia has given birth, I had trouble providing her with the proper nourishment to enable her to nurse our son. Frequently I had to cook a pot full of ersatz coffee with plenty sugar in it for her to make milk for the baby. From time to time I had to sneak out to nearby potato fields to dig up a bag full of potatoes. The local farmers had it made. The train brought daily people from the cities with treasured properties to trade to local farmers for food. Mia and I often paged through old cook books to read with awe how many pounds of butter and how many eggs were required to prepare certain meals. We wished the time would come when we could walk into a store and could say, give me five pounds of butter or a dozen eggs. All the misery came to an end with the monetary reform of 1948. We were allowed to exchange ten Reichsmarks for one Deutsche Mark, the famous DM. The limit was 30 DM. The food rationing cards were stopped on that day. Chancellor Adenauer pushed for the reform backed by the commander of the American general Lucius Clay. Later on he admitted he had grave reservations about it. What will happen he asked his minister of economy Professor Erhard, if the people go to a store the next day to buy something and it is not there. Erhard a great believer of a free market economy, replied don’t worry, the food will be there. He was right. The stores were jammed full. The only hitch was you needed the Dms. A couple of weeks later it really happened that there was a shortage of butter. That was no problem. Erhard opened the borders to Denmark and a flood of butter poured in. About that time, thanks to President Truman and general Marshal the Marshal plan was introduced pouring billions of dollars into the German economy. Bombed out factories were rebuilt equipped with new modern machinery creating the German miracle. Thousands of new firms were founded hiring millions of workers. A great prosperity set in and Germany became an exporting nation again.
I made out all right in my new job. I learned by doing mechanical drafting and in ten years became chief designer of the company. My childhood’s dream to emigrate to the US got hold of me again and at the end of 1955, we embarked on a journey to the USA.
In the course of my life I had the good fortune to enjoy and appreciate good food in many countries and states on both sides of the Atlantic. I was born in a country where food was scarce but the art of cooking was highly esteemed and was passed down from one generation to another. As the result the food was well prepared and it was a joy to consume it. Presently I live in a rich country where food is plentiful but the art of cooking became a lost art. It looks like we can’t have everything.
In the twentieth century the Industrial Revolution brought about monumental changes in the lives of it’s citizens, mostly for the better, in countries like Great Britain, where it has started and in other major European countries like, Germany and France.
The Industrial Revolution did not penetrate the smaller countries which after the two World Wars became even less consequential. There we find mostly agricultural societies where the nobility had large land holdings and the rest of the society tried to eke out a living on the margins.
In those marginal countries about 80 percent of the population was laboring in the fields. The rest found employment in the administrations of the state, counties and cities. Many found employment by the railroads, the lumber industry and with the armed forces. There was only one bread winner in most families except in agriculture. The job of raising the families, cooking and cleaning fell on the wives. To provide the family with nourishing meals on very limited incomes required experts in the kitchens. Fortunately the art of cooking was passed down from mother to daughter for many generations. To dine outside was an exception not a rule. On the rare occasions when the family could go out to dine they were not disappointed. The menu was long and comprehensive, the price on the high side and the waiting long. Refrigeration was practically non existent so the meals had to be cooked on the premises and that meant some animals had be slaughtered and vegetables picked from the garden or taken from the root cellar and wine from the wine cellar. However, bottled beer was already available . The waiting was worthwhile. The cooking was done by cooks who were doing it for a living, and not by a drifter who was hired yesterday. At home, the wife had to use her expertise and ingenuity to come up with nourishing and good tasting meals. She was up to the task. She could make miracles with the fresh vegetables and the family secret seasonings. Meat was expensive and beef almost unheard of. Refrigeration as we know it did not exist but most restaurants had ice boxes. Pork, fish and poultry were reasonably priced and more accessible
In our city there was a garden restaurant which I’ll never forget. Tables were set up under large shady trees and a string orchestra was playing in the background. As a boy I stopped often there and peeked across the top of the fence. While the orchestra was playing couples stood up from the tables and danced to the captivating sound of the violins and the bases. Wafts of mouth watering smell of food was hanging over the place. To me as a boy it was a heaven. That restaurant provided take out food as well. The food was placed in about two quart size blue outside white inside pots and the pots were slipped into a rack one on the top of another with a carrying handle on the top. What a treasure must have been in those pots .
When my father retired to a place of his birth, a God forsaken village in the middle of nowhere we entered into a different style of life and eating . As a boy I felt we moved into hell. The city which we left behind at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains had a character, set among rolling hills with the blue mountain ranges giving it a picture card framing . Our house was in a poor subsistence farming village surrounded by many similar one horse villages. For us new comers the village posed a grim picture, but on closer examination we found out that our neighbors led a contented, perhaps happy lives, since they did not know anything else. The village had one store with an attached community hall and one Reformed church up on a hill.
On week ends the community hall was filled with festively dressed young people vigorously dancing to the tune of a volunteer orchestra. The sound of the music filled the whole village.
There was no electricity, no telephone, no radio, and doctors and hospitals were miles away. Public communication was done by the village’s crier. It came handy that in the center of the village was a tall hill. The crier climbed to the top of the hill and in a loud voice made his announcements. If a farmer lost a cow because of a broken leg or something his loss was a big gain for the village.. The crier announced from the hill that fresh beef was available at such and such address. Come and get it because the meat wouldn’t keep longer than a day. Fresh beef at last. The main sources of protein were pork and poultry. Most everybody raised and fattened a pig. The slaughtering day was a kind of fiesta for the friends of the family except for the pig. The poor animal was slaughtered and laid on a big pile of straw and set on fire. When the fire was out, all the pig’s hair was gone. The butcher with a very sharp knife, gave the pig a shave and started dismembering the carcass. With shirt sleeves rolled up, everybody got his job cut out to render the pig into the final delicious pork products. The fat was rendered into lard and put in a big enameled pot. That was the pride of the house wife. Every part of the pig was used. The intestines were cleaned and the ground and well seasoned meat was funneled into them. Three kinds of sausages were prepared with meat, liver or blood. Eventually the sausages and the hams were smoked. The pig’s feet, ears and skin parts were boiled in a big pot and after a due time, removed from the fire and ladled out into many large soup dishes and placed outside for cooling. Needless to say, the work was accompanied with a great deal of hilarity and joking and the mood was enhanced by the consumption of quite a few bottles of wine. When evening came, the dishes were set out for cooling, and became jellied into a humongous mass called “Sulze” in German. Everybody grabbed a dish and after pouring a few drops of vinegar on it, consumed the delicious sulze. The products of the slaughtered pig helped the families get through the winter right into the coming spring.
I attended high school, and boarding school in a nearby city about 30 miles distance from home. When I went home for Christmas I knew that mother’s cooking masterpieces were waiting for me. Her specialty was stuffed cabbage. I have to digress to explain what kind of cabbage I am talking about. Heads of cabbages with the outside leaves removed and the core cut out and filled with salt were placed layer by layer into a big barrel up to the very top. The barrel was filled with water and covered with fitted boards. For pressure big stones were laid on the boards. All this of course has taken place in the cellar. Eventually fermentation had taken place. There was a faucet in the bottom of the barrel and the fluid was drained and recirculated a few times. In a couple of weeks the sauerkraut was ripe. The ripe cabbage heads were very tender and slightly translucent and were used mainly as a condiment accompanying the meals.
To make stuffed cabbage mother took a head and removed several leaves. Chopped meat seasoned with God knows what, formed into elongated balls and the kraut leaf was wrapped around it and secured with a string. Next she used several heads and cut them into fine pieces just like the kraut you buy in stores. Mother had a big stoneware pot with perhaps two gallons capacity. She put a layer of sauerkraut on the bottom followed with a layer of the stuffed cabbages and so forth until the pot was full. The whole contraption was subject to slow cooking through out the night and was declared finished in the morning. I forgot to mention that she put a couple of ham hocks as well into the mix. The result was out of this world. Today with great longing I look back to something unobtainable in my present life.
With the vacation over I had to return to the boarding school and resign to a very lean life style. As a growing boy I was always hungry. We were served three meals a day over there. For breakfast we got one cup of milk with a slice of bread.. We got a satisfying meal for lunch. From lunch at twelve it was a long time to supper at 7 PM. At 5 PM we got a break from the study hall and had time to look up our lockers in search for something to bite into. Friends from better to do homes had their lockers stocked with non-perishable foods like bacon, sausage and bread and so fort. My locker was most of the time, empty. How I longed just for a piece of dry bread. But it passed.
For reasons too complicated to explain at this juncture, I had to leave my home and my mother in hurry to save my life. I found myself in Budapest early in September, 1944. At this time about 600 miles to the east, the Germans were holding the line against the highly motorized Russian forces but their resistance was crumbling. It was still a sunny September in Budapest with not much sign of the war but we all knew that we are living on borrowed time. As a green boy from the hinterland, I was awe-struck by the wonders of the capitol city. The street cars, the famous bridges crossing the Danube from Buda to Pest and the other wonders of a big city. I was never further away from home than perhaps 100 miles. Fortunately I had some money in my pocket. My mother turned over all her Hungarian Pengos to me because under the inevitable Russian invasion her money would be worthless.
In a nutshell, I quickly found lodging and work in the city, and had a chance to sample some good food in the restaurants, not to mention the terrific and reasonably priced wines. My honeymoon in the city did not last very long. By December of 44 the victorious Russian forces were ready to invade the city. I did not wait for them but high- tailed it out of the city toward Vienna.
Going from Budapest to Vienna at this time was like jumping from the pan into the fire. The Germans annexed Austria in 1939, and were about to lose it again. Vienna was a very unhealthy place to be in this point in time. The war was going full blast as we experienced daily bombing from the American bombers.. I took refuge several times at the sound of alarm in one of the many high-rise bunkers. The walls were shaking from the noise of the flack on the top of the bunker or the bombs exploding nearby. It certainly was not the time to enjoy the pleasures of gay Vienna..
As refugees, my German wife and I received German food rationing cards in the restaurants. We had to surrender a number of coupons depending on the choice of the menu selected.. What was available was plentiful and selections were under very appealing names like “Stamgericht und Hausgericht”. They contained only vegetables like boiled cabbage, many kinds of beets, carrots and all sliced and garnished with dressings. It was filling but not very nutritious. The rationing cards contained very few meat coupons, so they had be used very judiciously.
During my short stay in Austria, I was gainfully employed in many odds and ends’ jobs such as waiter, machine shop worker and so forth and drifted from one place to another. In the village named Weibern, my good fortune had brought me together with my future wife Mia. She was a beautiful German Red Cross nurse who was attached to a camp of juveniles who were evacuated from the western part of Germany to be out of harms way. Later on when the war ended around May of 45, she was expelled from Austria along many German nationals. I had met Mia in my capacity as a translator from Hungarian to German. We took a liking to each other and resolved to remain together. The American army provided a truck to convey the German evacuees from Weibern to Munich. It posed a big problem for Mia and I. Since I was labeled as a displaced person and was not eligible to go to Germany, Mia and I agreed that if I could make it, we would meet in front of the Munich railroad station. The odds were against us. To make a long story short, by hitch hiking and walking, I illegally crossed the Austrian German border at Passau and eventually reached Munich. I’ll never forget the sight when I walked into the city. It was in ruins. Most houses were left with just the chimneys standing. I was lingering in front of the railroad station when suddenly a big American truck arrived. There was Mia on the top of it . We were overwhelmed with joy and took it as a sign that our good fortune meant us to remain together. There was no regular railroad traffic any more between Munich and Essen about 500 Km. distance in the northern part of Germany. We managed to secure a passage on a freight train and had to climb on the top of logs with our bundles of luggage and to hang on for our dear life. This was my grand entrance to Germany. Eventually we arrived in Essen and when we went to her mother’s address we learned that her apartment complex was bombed out. Her father died before the war. Her mother was alive but relocated to a small village in Westphalia.. Our journey continued and we arrived on our final destination to Rahden in Westphalia. Before I digress any further away from the original purpose of the subject matter, I have to squeeze in a critical period of our life. To her great delight and my distress, Mia,became pregnant and we had to get married in a hurry. The local magistrate told me that I couldn’t marry because as a Hungarian national by Hungarian law I was underage at twenty years old. I had no guardian. I had escaped from my home with only the shirt on my back without any documents in my possession. The good magistrate finally relented and nominated himself as my guardian and as such he gave me his approval. We married on September 6 and our son Tom was born on September 29th. I found lodging and employment in Rahden. We spent the next ten years there so I had ample time to learn the language and immerse myself in German culture.
Germany in 1945 was a country in disarray. The war was lost and millions of refugees and people evicted from the former German territories on the east had to resettle. The cities and villages were full with forcibly resettled new comers. It wasn’t a question how best prepare food but where to find it. You only got what the food rationing card allowed you to get. After Mia has given birth, I had trouble providing her with the proper nourishment to enable her to nurse our son. Frequently I had to cook a pot full of ersatz coffee with plenty sugar in it for her to make milk for the baby. From time to time I had to sneak out to nearby potato fields to dig up a bag full of potatoes. The local farmers had it made. The train brought daily people from the cities with treasured properties to trade to local farmers for food. Mia and I often paged through old cook books to read with awe how many pounds of butter and how many eggs were required to prepare certain meals. We wished the time would come when we could walk into a store and could say, give me five pounds of butter or a dozen eggs. All the misery came to an end with the monetary reform of 1948. We were allowed to exchange ten Reichsmarks for one Deutsche Mark, the famous DM. The limit was 30 DM. The food rationing cards were stopped on that day. Chancellor Adenauer pushed for the reform backed by the commander of the American general Lucius Clay. Later on he admitted he had grave reservations about it. What will happen he asked his minister of economy Professor Erhard, if the people go to a store the next day to buy something and it is not there. Erhard a great believer of a free market economy, replied don’t worry, the food will be there. He was right. The stores were jammed full. The only hitch was you needed the Dms. A couple of weeks later it really happened that there was a shortage of butter. That was no problem. Erhard opened the borders to Denmark and a flood of butter poured in. About that time, thanks to President Truman and general Marshal the Marshal plan was introduced pouring billions of dollars into the German economy. Bombed out factories were rebuilt equipped with new modern machinery creating the German miracle. Thousands of new firms were founded hiring millions of workers. A great prosperity set in and Germany became an exporting nation again.
I made out all right in my new job. I learned by doing mechanical drafting and in ten years became chief designer of the company. My childhood’s dream to emigrate to the US got hold of me again and at the end of 1955, we embarked on a journey to the USA.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Religion
My Way!
I formed my opinion about art, music, religion and politics by paying close attention to happenings around me during my long life. Those impressions gave me a solid foundation on which to stand. I don’t know if anybody who reads my writing will ever agree with me, no matter , I am comfortable with them.
Let’s start with religion.
I was born and raised as Roman Catholic. Our family attended church services regularly and for years my brother and I were altar boys. We took religion very casually perhaps because we were mixed family. My mother was Catholic, father Protestant. This went even deeper. Mother’s father was Protestant and her mother Catholic. Religion never played a dominant role in our lives, we never even had a bible in our house. I attended Catholic elementary school and graduated from Catholic high school. Our religion instructors, usually priests explained to us that it isn’t necessary not even advisable to have a bible in the house. The church will teach us all we have to know about religion. The study of the bible by unqualified people, people without thorough theological education would only lead to misconceptions and perhaps even to a split of the church. Martin Luther was a well educated monk. His well justified protest about the abuse of authority by the pope and some of his cardinals did not aim to split the church just to cease the abuse.
Almost as if sensing blood in water, encouraged laymen rushed to study the bible. We all know the rest. Everybody interpreted the bible his way which led to more and more splits. Today God knows how many Protestant denominations are in existence.
In our religion classes we were repeatedly instructed that we have a heavenly father, the creator of the universe who is keeping track of everything happening down here. We have to pray to him for guidance and follow the teaching of the church and model our lives after his only begotten son Jesus Christ. We always have to keep in mind that salvation can be conveyed to us only through the Catholic church. We were discouraged to attend church services in different churches. We were made to understand by inferences that the Latin language was the preferred instrument to gain God’s attention. I have to admit that as the consequence of WWII. as I was drifting through Europe from one country to another and wherever I found a Catholic church I was comforted by the familiar voice of the Latin rights ritual.
I did not know much about what the Protestants did stand for. After my father’s retirement we relocated to the place of his birth It was an obscure little all Protestant village. Out of curiosity once or twice I attended Sunday church services in the local church, called the Reformed church. It was a simple brick all white building with a detached wooden bell tower. The Reformed church was leaning close the Calvinists. The interior reflected it faithfully. White walls without pictures or statues. A couple of rows of simple benches faced an elevated platform supporting the pulpit. Previously I befriended the preacher. He was a very likable person. Contrary to many other Protestant churches, the Reformed church ordains only college educated theologians. The graduates can read the bible besides the native language in Greek and Latin as well. What a waste of education for the pour guy who ended up in our village. The reverend Sipos addressed the congregation consisting mainly of elderly people in their Sunday’s best in a simple language enlarging upon a chapter of the bible. The population of the village consisted mainly of subsistence farmers who laboring on small family plots had trouble making a living. The preacher could not help preaching over their head. Religion started losing meaning for them. It was a fertile ground for the communists who took over the place during the following years.
I learned a great deal more about religions after I took up residence in the USA. I spent my early years in the northern states such as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I did not add much to my religious education during that chapter of my life. Things changed after my retirement when I relocated to North Carolina. I married a local lady and acquired a new family and new friends in the area. During my travel in the area I became aware of many immense church buildings and upon a closer look I learned that most were Baptist churches. Baptists come in various shades and my new family members were associated with several branches of them. I joined my wife to attend services at her church a few times. Listening to TV evangelists , reading the local papers and talking to friends and relatives truly rounded out my religious education. There are many mega churches in the south presided over by preachers who I call “Ayatollahs“. There is a big difference between the Baptists and the other Protestants. There are striking similarities between them and the churches in the Muslim world. The world of Islam has two main branches which are the Sonnies and the Shiites. For spiritual guidance both branches rely on the Koran but with an important difference. The Sonnies read the Koran and try to follow it’s teachings to the best of their abilities. The Shiites respect the Koran just as well but rely more of it’s interpretation by their high priests the Ayatollahs. The Ayatollah’ dictum is the law.
Today the dividing line between church and state isn’t as clearly defined in the south as it was at the beginning of our republic. The line is burled by mighty opposing forces in the arena. The winning forces are led by rock-star like church leaders, the Christian Ayatollahs. Most of them started small with just a handful of parishioners. Many of them did not even have a formal education, but they all had the gift of gab and good business instinct. With their winning personalities they attracted more and more members and eventually ended up with a congregation numbering in the thousands. There is no hierarchy in the Baptist churches. They are completely independent and the “Ayatollah” rules over them like a king. Their influence over the membership is overwhelming. They dominate the members’ daily lives, tell them how to live what to do an by inference how to vote. A nod from them to a political candidate can make them, a thumbs down can end a political career. The bench mark for them is Jimmy Carter. Any candidate who doesn’t measure up to him, has to go down the drain. One rock-star evangelist declared, “God wants us to be prosperous”. He probably meant himself. They all have fabulous life styles, drive expensive cars, and live in penthouse apartments or in suburban mansions.
,
The leading philosophy of most of the churches is Determinism. The belief called Determinism is teaching that the laws of nature decreed immutable causes and effects, and that God did not play the dice to find out the end of an event. God doesn’t allow any events to be random and undetermined. Einstein embraced that concept from Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) of an amorphous God reflected in the awe-inspiring beauty, rationality, and unity of nature’s laws. Einstein did not believe in a personal God who rewarded and punished and intervened in our daily lives.
For Einstein, and indeed most classical physicists, the idea of fundamental randomness in the universe-that events could just happen without a cause- was not only a discomfort, it undermined the entire program of physics. Most of the Christian churches fully endorse the teachings of determinism but the Baptists put a special emphasis on it.
In the Protestant churches the service consists of preaching and singing and all that is taking place within the allocated hour or hour and a half. The congregation sits on well padded benches to be able to endure the time but they have to stand once while. Kneeling isn’t part of the ritual. The preacher has to use his allocated time to his best advantage. He knows how to grab and hold the congregation’s attention and they hang mesmerized on every word he says. He might refer to a chapter in the bible but he is mainly zeroing in on his core belief of determinism. God is keeping track of our thinking and doing. He knows when a sparrow falls and the hairs on our heads are numbered. He is often asking the rhetorical question “ What did God do today in your lives.? God is in charge of everything and everything that happens is in God’s will.
One Sunday I listened to a sermon given by the leading Ayatollah in an Atlanta church. With a very satisfied smile on his face he walked to the center of the pulpit and announced that as a testimonial he is pleased to present a guest. It turned out that his guest was a navy man who served during WWII in the Pacific arena. His ship was torpedoed and the survivors were trying to hang on to life by grabbing on to the floating remains of the sunken ship. A few lucky ones could pull themselves entirely out of water, others just were holding on to the pieces, but most of them just had to swim in circles desperately waiting for rescuers. As feared, very soon the sharks appeared smelling blood in the water and grabbed one swimmer after another. After many horrifying hours the rescue ship arrived. Our guest was among the few who were rescued.. The Ayatollah announced, as a clincher, with raised voice that it was in God’s will that the guest was saved. He did not follow up in explaining that it was in God’s will as well that the others were eaten alive. We have to ask as well if it was in God’s will that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps or it was in His will that the Titanic run into an ice berg. What an outrageous idea. How dare we making God responsible for our bloody deeds. God gave us a blue print about how to lead a happy life. It is anchored down in detail in the Holy Bible. To be able to comprehend, He gave us an advanced computer mounted between our two ears-- our brain. He gave us last but not least, a free will.
He told us “You have a choice. You may follow my commandments or you can go your own way”.
In reading one of C.S. Lewis’ book “The Problem of Pain”, I was surprised that he ran into a problem which neither he nor I could understand.. The problem of unanswered prayers.
Lewis, a Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge was for many years an atheist., and described his conversion in Surprised by Joy: In the Trinity Term of 1929 he said, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God and was the most dejected and reluctant convert in England”. His writings are known to millions of people all over the world in translation. He died on 22nd November 1963, at his home in Oxford.
Christ said to the apostles “ Anything you ask of my Father in my name will be given to you”. The bible gives no further qualifications. C.S. Lewis concluded maybe “ So to speak” should be added to it. Lewis married later in life to a lady who had a son from a previous marriage. The three of them formed a loving family. After a couple of years into their marriage, his wife developed cancer. Lewis was devastated by the news and prayed day and night asking God for mercy and intervention on behalf of his wife. Nothing helped, his wife passed away.
The six million Jews in the Nazi death camps certainly must have prayed incessantly asking God for intersession for they were after all, the chosen people. Their prayers remained unanswered. We have to conclude in unison with Spinoza and Einstein that we don’t have a personal God who rewards and punishes and intervenes in our daily lives.
In the early twentieth century the world experienced a disruption of societal certainties and moral absolutes in a modernist atmosphere For Einstein, and indeed most classical physicists, the idea the universe could have a fundamental randomness. He believed that events just happen without a cause. It was not only a cause of discomfort but undermined the entire program of physics..
Meanwhile, another approach to quantum mechanics was developed in the summer of 1925 by a bright-faced 23 year old hiking enthusiast, Werner Heisenberg, who was a student of Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and then of Max Born in Gottingen. Heisenberg famous and disruptive contribution came two years later, the uncertainty principle.
It is impossible to know Heisenberg declared, the precise position of a particle, such as a moving electron, and it’s precise momentum at the same instant.
This is a feature of our universe, he said, not merely some defect in our observing and measuring abilities.
The uncertainty principle, so simple yet so startling, was a stake in the heart of classical physics. It asserts that there is no objective reality- not even an objective position of a particle- outside of our observation. Chance, indeterminacy, and probability took the place of certainty.
O.K. Where does all that leave us simple mortals? We have to resign to the fact that we are the masters of our destiny. We have to use our God given talents and make the best of it. God is a benevolent observer above but we cannot expect any Divine intervention. Life isn’t a determined action, but a random action.
I formed my opinion about art, music, religion and politics by paying close attention to happenings around me during my long life. Those impressions gave me a solid foundation on which to stand. I don’t know if anybody who reads my writing will ever agree with me, no matter , I am comfortable with them.
Let’s start with religion.
I was born and raised as Roman Catholic. Our family attended church services regularly and for years my brother and I were altar boys. We took religion very casually perhaps because we were mixed family. My mother was Catholic, father Protestant. This went even deeper. Mother’s father was Protestant and her mother Catholic. Religion never played a dominant role in our lives, we never even had a bible in our house. I attended Catholic elementary school and graduated from Catholic high school. Our religion instructors, usually priests explained to us that it isn’t necessary not even advisable to have a bible in the house. The church will teach us all we have to know about religion. The study of the bible by unqualified people, people without thorough theological education would only lead to misconceptions and perhaps even to a split of the church. Martin Luther was a well educated monk. His well justified protest about the abuse of authority by the pope and some of his cardinals did not aim to split the church just to cease the abuse.
Almost as if sensing blood in water, encouraged laymen rushed to study the bible. We all know the rest. Everybody interpreted the bible his way which led to more and more splits. Today God knows how many Protestant denominations are in existence.
In our religion classes we were repeatedly instructed that we have a heavenly father, the creator of the universe who is keeping track of everything happening down here. We have to pray to him for guidance and follow the teaching of the church and model our lives after his only begotten son Jesus Christ. We always have to keep in mind that salvation can be conveyed to us only through the Catholic church. We were discouraged to attend church services in different churches. We were made to understand by inferences that the Latin language was the preferred instrument to gain God’s attention. I have to admit that as the consequence of WWII. as I was drifting through Europe from one country to another and wherever I found a Catholic church I was comforted by the familiar voice of the Latin rights ritual.
I did not know much about what the Protestants did stand for. After my father’s retirement we relocated to the place of his birth It was an obscure little all Protestant village. Out of curiosity once or twice I attended Sunday church services in the local church, called the Reformed church. It was a simple brick all white building with a detached wooden bell tower. The Reformed church was leaning close the Calvinists. The interior reflected it faithfully. White walls without pictures or statues. A couple of rows of simple benches faced an elevated platform supporting the pulpit. Previously I befriended the preacher. He was a very likable person. Contrary to many other Protestant churches, the Reformed church ordains only college educated theologians. The graduates can read the bible besides the native language in Greek and Latin as well. What a waste of education for the pour guy who ended up in our village. The reverend Sipos addressed the congregation consisting mainly of elderly people in their Sunday’s best in a simple language enlarging upon a chapter of the bible. The population of the village consisted mainly of subsistence farmers who laboring on small family plots had trouble making a living. The preacher could not help preaching over their head. Religion started losing meaning for them. It was a fertile ground for the communists who took over the place during the following years.
I learned a great deal more about religions after I took up residence in the USA. I spent my early years in the northern states such as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I did not add much to my religious education during that chapter of my life. Things changed after my retirement when I relocated to North Carolina. I married a local lady and acquired a new family and new friends in the area. During my travel in the area I became aware of many immense church buildings and upon a closer look I learned that most were Baptist churches. Baptists come in various shades and my new family members were associated with several branches of them. I joined my wife to attend services at her church a few times. Listening to TV evangelists , reading the local papers and talking to friends and relatives truly rounded out my religious education. There are many mega churches in the south presided over by preachers who I call “Ayatollahs“. There is a big difference between the Baptists and the other Protestants. There are striking similarities between them and the churches in the Muslim world. The world of Islam has two main branches which are the Sonnies and the Shiites. For spiritual guidance both branches rely on the Koran but with an important difference. The Sonnies read the Koran and try to follow it’s teachings to the best of their abilities. The Shiites respect the Koran just as well but rely more of it’s interpretation by their high priests the Ayatollahs. The Ayatollah’ dictum is the law.
Today the dividing line between church and state isn’t as clearly defined in the south as it was at the beginning of our republic. The line is burled by mighty opposing forces in the arena. The winning forces are led by rock-star like church leaders, the Christian Ayatollahs. Most of them started small with just a handful of parishioners. Many of them did not even have a formal education, but they all had the gift of gab and good business instinct. With their winning personalities they attracted more and more members and eventually ended up with a congregation numbering in the thousands. There is no hierarchy in the Baptist churches. They are completely independent and the “Ayatollah” rules over them like a king. Their influence over the membership is overwhelming. They dominate the members’ daily lives, tell them how to live what to do an by inference how to vote. A nod from them to a political candidate can make them, a thumbs down can end a political career. The bench mark for them is Jimmy Carter. Any candidate who doesn’t measure up to him, has to go down the drain. One rock-star evangelist declared, “God wants us to be prosperous”. He probably meant himself. They all have fabulous life styles, drive expensive cars, and live in penthouse apartments or in suburban mansions.
,
The leading philosophy of most of the churches is Determinism. The belief called Determinism is teaching that the laws of nature decreed immutable causes and effects, and that God did not play the dice to find out the end of an event. God doesn’t allow any events to be random and undetermined. Einstein embraced that concept from Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) of an amorphous God reflected in the awe-inspiring beauty, rationality, and unity of nature’s laws. Einstein did not believe in a personal God who rewarded and punished and intervened in our daily lives.
For Einstein, and indeed most classical physicists, the idea of fundamental randomness in the universe-that events could just happen without a cause- was not only a discomfort, it undermined the entire program of physics. Most of the Christian churches fully endorse the teachings of determinism but the Baptists put a special emphasis on it.
In the Protestant churches the service consists of preaching and singing and all that is taking place within the allocated hour or hour and a half. The congregation sits on well padded benches to be able to endure the time but they have to stand once while. Kneeling isn’t part of the ritual. The preacher has to use his allocated time to his best advantage. He knows how to grab and hold the congregation’s attention and they hang mesmerized on every word he says. He might refer to a chapter in the bible but he is mainly zeroing in on his core belief of determinism. God is keeping track of our thinking and doing. He knows when a sparrow falls and the hairs on our heads are numbered. He is often asking the rhetorical question “ What did God do today in your lives.? God is in charge of everything and everything that happens is in God’s will.
One Sunday I listened to a sermon given by the leading Ayatollah in an Atlanta church. With a very satisfied smile on his face he walked to the center of the pulpit and announced that as a testimonial he is pleased to present a guest. It turned out that his guest was a navy man who served during WWII in the Pacific arena. His ship was torpedoed and the survivors were trying to hang on to life by grabbing on to the floating remains of the sunken ship. A few lucky ones could pull themselves entirely out of water, others just were holding on to the pieces, but most of them just had to swim in circles desperately waiting for rescuers. As feared, very soon the sharks appeared smelling blood in the water and grabbed one swimmer after another. After many horrifying hours the rescue ship arrived. Our guest was among the few who were rescued.. The Ayatollah announced, as a clincher, with raised voice that it was in God’s will that the guest was saved. He did not follow up in explaining that it was in God’s will as well that the others were eaten alive. We have to ask as well if it was in God’s will that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps or it was in His will that the Titanic run into an ice berg. What an outrageous idea. How dare we making God responsible for our bloody deeds. God gave us a blue print about how to lead a happy life. It is anchored down in detail in the Holy Bible. To be able to comprehend, He gave us an advanced computer mounted between our two ears-- our brain. He gave us last but not least, a free will.
He told us “You have a choice. You may follow my commandments or you can go your own way”.
In reading one of C.S. Lewis’ book “The Problem of Pain”, I was surprised that he ran into a problem which neither he nor I could understand.. The problem of unanswered prayers.
Lewis, a Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge was for many years an atheist., and described his conversion in Surprised by Joy: In the Trinity Term of 1929 he said, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God and was the most dejected and reluctant convert in England”. His writings are known to millions of people all over the world in translation. He died on 22nd November 1963, at his home in Oxford.
Christ said to the apostles “ Anything you ask of my Father in my name will be given to you”. The bible gives no further qualifications. C.S. Lewis concluded maybe “ So to speak” should be added to it. Lewis married later in life to a lady who had a son from a previous marriage. The three of them formed a loving family. After a couple of years into their marriage, his wife developed cancer. Lewis was devastated by the news and prayed day and night asking God for mercy and intervention on behalf of his wife. Nothing helped, his wife passed away.
The six million Jews in the Nazi death camps certainly must have prayed incessantly asking God for intersession for they were after all, the chosen people. Their prayers remained unanswered. We have to conclude in unison with Spinoza and Einstein that we don’t have a personal God who rewards and punishes and intervenes in our daily lives.
In the early twentieth century the world experienced a disruption of societal certainties and moral absolutes in a modernist atmosphere For Einstein, and indeed most classical physicists, the idea the universe could have a fundamental randomness. He believed that events just happen without a cause. It was not only a cause of discomfort but undermined the entire program of physics..
Meanwhile, another approach to quantum mechanics was developed in the summer of 1925 by a bright-faced 23 year old hiking enthusiast, Werner Heisenberg, who was a student of Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and then of Max Born in Gottingen. Heisenberg famous and disruptive contribution came two years later, the uncertainty principle.
It is impossible to know Heisenberg declared, the precise position of a particle, such as a moving electron, and it’s precise momentum at the same instant.
This is a feature of our universe, he said, not merely some defect in our observing and measuring abilities.
The uncertainty principle, so simple yet so startling, was a stake in the heart of classical physics. It asserts that there is no objective reality- not even an objective position of a particle- outside of our observation. Chance, indeterminacy, and probability took the place of certainty.
O.K. Where does all that leave us simple mortals? We have to resign to the fact that we are the masters of our destiny. We have to use our God given talents and make the best of it. God is a benevolent observer above but we cannot expect any Divine intervention. Life isn’t a determined action, but a random action.
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