IN PRAISE OF ‘GETTING BY’ – The Anxious Mouse versus the Heroic German Shepherd
“Speak English,” she says in exasperation. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” I had used only one word — “Schweyk.” The name of the hero (or anti-hero) in one of Bertolt Brecht’s plays. She wasn’t angry, not really. Maybe just tired of me trying to turn a simple drive into a seminar.
“Ode to Joy” in April 2025 – are you sure?
“Friends, Not This Despair”, these are the opening lines of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. “Freunde, nicht diese Worte!”, in German. The symphony doesn’t open with triumphant choruses. It opens with confusion, anger, and darkness — low strings groping for meaning. Only later, after struggle and silence, does the melody of joy emerge.
A brotherly conversation early in the Hitler regime. (as I image it)
“What do you want me to do it about? Help whom and how?” It is September 1933.
The two brothers are sitting together, having a beer and schnaps in the souterrain bar of Kiel’s city hall called “Rathauskeller”. Wilhelm Anschuetz, my mother’s father, is snapping back at his brother Gerhard.
"We never spoke about this again..."
" "We never spoke about this again, afterwards," my father writes in his memoirs. In April 1935, at 17 years old, he was taken in by the police. He describes how the interrogations "went on for six days. Then the friendly jailer came, unlocked my cell and said I could go. I would be picked up. In front of the police station my father's official government car was waiting. The driver brought me home."
His memoir then continues with the stark sentence: "This week was not spoken about at home at all."
Recent internal divisions, or "cracks," within the MAGA coalition have emerged over specific policy issues and personal conflicts, most notably the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and disagreements between Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Where the Cracks Are Showing
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(recorded 10/22/25)
Paul Krugman: Hi everyone. Paul Krugman again. This week I’m g
“Speak English,” she says, exasperated. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
I had used only one word — “Schweyk,” the anti-hero from one of Bertolt Brecht’s plays.
My wife Gloria and I were driving toward Tomales Bay for her birthday weekend — hills, cows, sharp curves, the ocean in the distance. Beautiful. We were breathing out the city.
And still, I couldn’t stop myself.
“Can you give me a single story of the heroism of not-resisting? Of not-standing-out? Of capitulating, even betraying your values — and still being right?”
Each of my two grandfathers in 1928, what do you think about the Jews?
I am interviewing them - in my imagination
My My Anschuetz Grandfathers' my mother's father
Prof. Wilhelm Anschuetz, Geheimrat (Honorary Medical State Counsel):
"I don't have an opinion about Jews one way or the other.There are lots of good ones around, all over the hospital and the university.Good families, good students, some of them even are in my sailing club now.