Sunday Morning Thoughts – October 13, 2024

Where do I start?

For anybody in the US who likes good music and would like to support the Harris/Walz campaign - check out Musicians for the Greater Good. There is an online concert this afternoon (5 PM Eastern). It’s streamed on YouTube. There’s a great line-up. Seriously, check it out. Contributions from abroad didn’t work last time I tried and for political campaigns they are not allowed anyway. For good reason. Not that that’s stopping foreign money flowing, but that’s a different story.

If you do join don’t forget to say hi in the YT chat. I’m sure there will be some lovely people in that YT chat. In fact, I know there will be. Oh and don’t show up late – you’d be missing a real treat. That’s all I can say 😉.

That was an important message to start with.

What next? So much going on this week.

We need to talk about the Nobel Peace Prize. I know I don’t usually look stuff up, but I wanted to get this right so I’m quoting the Nobel Committee here:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

If you’re like me, you had probably never heard of Nihon Hidankyo before. I was pretty sure that it would be a surprise winner. It usually is. My money was on someone in NZ. I was also pretty sure that it was not going to be related to any current conflicts, or any nations involved in them. Even if it was humanitarian agencies. Not this time around. Then again you never know what the Norwegian Nobel Committee will do. I might have called them spineless *beeeeeeeeeep*s when they didn’t award the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai. They eventually did a year later, but it was a shared prize which bothered me a lot.

Now that we’ve established that I have a history of finding their choices odd - to put it mildly. I’m not saying Nihon Hidankyo are not worthy winners. I don’t know enough about them. It did make me go look up all the winners though. There have been some ridiculous ones, I’m sure you agree. And then there is one that people might have forgotten about. Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.

That was one of the well-deserved ones for sure.

I find the list of previous Nobel Peace Prize winners super interesting, for so many reasons. Have a look. I can’t go into everything, but I’m sure you’ll find it as interesting as I did. I linked it above.

Now, should we be surprised about a Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to an organization that wants a world free of nuclear weapons? Would you be surprised to hear that so far there have been eight Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to people/organizations with similar aims? You can look up the details yourselves, but here’s a list:

• 2024 – Nihon Hidankyo

• 2017 – International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

• 2005 – International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei

• 1995 – Joseph Rotblat and Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

• 1985 – International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

• 1982 – Alva Myrday and Alfonso García Robles

• 1974 – Eisaku Sato

• 1962 – Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling was one of the few people who won two Nobel Prizes – one in Chemistry and then the Nobel Peace Prize eight years later. If you’re ever in Stockholm, you have to check out the Nobelmuseum. And if you’re ever in Oslo, you most definitely have to check out the Nobel Peace Center. I was there right when it opened in 2005. They were just putting on some finishing touches. It remains one of my favorite museums.

I already wrote two other newsletters this week, where I talked about mental health and mental health at work. Both very important topics. And they are only going to get more important. This leads me to a book update. Last weekend I finally managed to re-upload my cover and manuscript to books on demand. It’s been a week and I haven’t heard back. That’s a good thing as it hopefully means no other changes needed. So, I’m hoping my book OY! PAY ATTENTION! will soon be available in online bookshops other than Amazon.

Because I’m new to this and I had no idea what I was doing, the two “version” of the book don’t have the same ISBN number, and the cover is also slightly different. Identical contents though – or almost identical. The table with the chapters should be in color in the books on demand version.

Chapter overview - OY! PAY ATTENTION!

Steep freaking learning curve. But I did it! I’ll let you know once it’s out.

Thanks to everybody who’s already bought it, read it and given me lovely feedback. I got a really nice compliment this week and I’m quoting here “The book is so “you””.

Made me smile.

Not sure if I joked on here about watching true crime and how that seemed to calm down my nervous system. There is some science behind that. When you’re used to chaos and have had a lot of emotional and/or physical trauma the violence and pain is familiar and … *drumroll* familiar is good. Familiar is what your brain and nervous system like. It makes perfect sense. Sadly. My nervous system has a hard time dealing with peace and quiet.

I did a little self-experiment, and I can tell you it worked. Almost too well. Now, I’ll be working on being okay in calm, peaceful surroundings with lovely people – AGAIN. Been here before. Had that realization before. My nervous system has not fully adapted and relaxed into it – YET.

So, I painted – a lot. Here’s one example. *back to edit* I just realized that I’d used this before, but I like it so I’m just going to leave it.

Now I feel like going to buy flowers. I think there is a flower shop at the station. They moved all the shops around but I think I know where it’s at. If not, there is definitely one supermarket that sells flowers. And if I don’t like any of those, I might just pop into the bookshop next door. Win, win, win. Or something like that.

Anyway, was there anything else? Oh yes, I finally went on a longer walk. I walked around Lake Rot (Rotsee) with a friend. It’s about four miles. It wasn’t the prettiest day but there were soooo many trains. It’s a busy route and you’re walking right next to the tracks on one side of the lake. Me happy!

On the way home I had to change trains in Olten (as you do) and I felt like having a Ragusa Donut for some reason. Dunkin is right next to track 12 and my train had arrived on track 10. Perfect. And I had 10 minutes to get to my connecting train on track 7. Guess what?! Dunkin donuts no longer sell the Ragusa donut. They were not sure when they stopped selling them but said possibly October 1. Bad luck. So, I thought, maybe I’ll buy some Magenbrot from that stand between platforms 4 and 7 (my connection left from platform 7). They had raised the prices on Magenbrot again. That wasn’t going to happen. Nope. Sorry. Spending boundary reached. And yes, the donut would have cost more – what’s your point?

Next up Starbucks, they are right on the platform between tracks 4 and 7 too (there is no track 5 & 6 for those who don’t know the station in Olten). It’s where you have shops and restaurants. I saw a sign for pumpkin spice latte and figured I’d give that a try. Went in, saw the price and walked straight back out. CHF 8.60 (that’s about $9.50) for a tall pumpkin spice latte? Yeah, no. That’s not gonna happen either.

Believe it or not I still had a couple of minutes to spare so I went to Coop and got myself some Magenbrot there (it was on sale) and also some Apfelschorle. Cost me way less than any of the other options.

And right on cue there are church bells and the sun is out.

Hope you had a good week and are having a lovely Sunday. Hugs all around.