Florists in Potsdam Germany

In the Studio with Ruby Barber, the Florist Behind Berlin-Based Mary Lennox - W Magazine

Ruby Barber in her studio, photograph courtesy of Becca Crawford. Barber spends her days scouring Berlin’s parks for dry materials and visiting local growers in Brandenburg and Potsdam, returning to her studio to assemble dripping, plumed constructions from the spoils. While her regular haunts supply the materials for most of her creations, some of Barber’s favored brambles can only be found further afield—and sometimes for just a week or two at a time. In late summer, Dutch hydrangea farms dispose of several wheelbarrows’ worth of sun-crisped heads. On the island of Mallorca, the narrow country roads are littered with perfect gold-fringed palm fronds. In the southern Italian countryside, overgrown family greenhouses shelter dead plants that have dried perfectly in place. “No work needs to be done to make an installation from these things,” Barber says. “Nature’s done the work already.” The daughter of two contemporary art gallerists, Barber’s rise has coincided with a shift in the fashion and visual art worlds, where a growing appetite for living designs has put her abstract installations in high demand. “There’s an increasing desire in modern times to feel close to nature. People want more and more to incorporate that natural language into their lives, and brands are starting to understand that.” But Barber’s designs, commissioned to reinvigorate established labels, are so rich in color and texture as to risk eclipsing them altogether. At last year’s Saut Hermès, an equestrian competition sponsored by the French house at the Grand Palais in Paris, Barber hung enormous downy columns of tea-colored amaranth like stalactites from the glass-paneled ceilings of the Grand Palais. For Loro Piana’s Fall/Winter 2020 presentation, her team scoured the Lombardy region of Northern Italy, sourcing a medley of local plants to construct a garden inside of the mid century modern venue. The year has been a whirlwind for Barber; a steady stream of projects kept her bouncing between Hamburg, Paris and Milan until Germany’s recent lockdown order resulted in a sort of forced retreat. “It’s a relief in a way, and a chance to think about the sort of work I actually want to do,” she says of the imposed hiatus. Perhaps, while she’s confined to her apartment, Barber will make an exception to her no-flowers-in-the-home rule. Her window looks out onto a park, so she can keep an eye out for the first blooms. ...https://www.wmagazine.com/story/ruby-barber-mary-lennox-florist-berlin-interview/

Germany may end coal use - Sunbury News

Johan Rockstroem, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research. “This could cascade globally, locking in the fastest energy transition in history.” The plan foresees that Germany’s coal plants will be phased out step-by-step to reduce the output of greenhouse gases. Currently, Germany’s coal plants produce the largest amount of carbon dioxide of any country in Europe. The commission’s plan leaves open which plants should be shut down first, saying it’s a decision the government needs to negotiate with the plants’ operators, the German news agency dpa reported. The commission suggests that in the next ten years, the government should help create up to 5,000 new jobs in the affected regions when coal mining will be phased out. These regions — in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony — should also get federal subsidies totaling 40 billion euros (45.6 billion dollars) in the next twenty years. “New jobs will be created through structural measures in the coal mining regions,” Pofalla said. “We will keep up secure and affordable energy supply and the agreement will lead to sustainable climate protection in Germany.” Germany is committed to an “energy transition” that involves replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources such as solar and wind power. While the country has made great strides in that direction — renewables beat coal for the first time last year — removing coal from the power equation entirely is a major challenge. The reduction in coal will have to be compensated by an increase in renewable power sources and — at least in the interim — from burning more natural gas, which emits about half the amount of greenhouse gases as coal. Greenpeace, which wants all coal plants shut down by 2030, welcomed that “Germany finally has a timetable how the country can become coal-free” but said the measures were not ambitious and fast enough. “The speed is wrong,” said Martin Kaiser, the head of Greenpeace. “Exiting coal by the year 2038 only is inacceptable.” The country’s environmental groups welcomed the commission’s recommendation that Hambach Forest in western Germany, an ancient woodland that became a flashpoint of anti-coal protests last year, should be saved. Energy company RWE’s plans to cut down half of the Hambach Forest to expand a lignite strip mine had seen protesters camping out in the trees for months to block workers from cutting them. An opinion poll released by public broadcaster ZDF found that 73 percent of Germans agree a quick exit from coal is very important. The telephone poll of 1,285 people, conducted Jan. 22-24, had a margin of error of about three percentage points. This version corrects the commission’s suggested subsidy for affected regions to 40 billion euros, not 40 million euros. Frank Jor...https://www.sunburynews.com/opinion/25027/germany-may-end-coal-use

How the Alternative for Germany Has Transformed the Country

No other party leader stands as much for the AfD's split personality as Gauland. A former senior official in the state government in Hesse, in western Germany, Gauland lives in a dignified Potsdam neighborhood filled with mansions. He can speak intelligently about Prussian history -- and then, without missing a beat, claim that the Nazi era was but a "speck of bird shit" on German history. "We're a thorn in the side of a political system that has become outdated," Gauland told the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung earlier this month. He wants to drive out anyone who played a role in what he calls the "Merkel System," including people in the media, and he has called for a "peaceful revolution." But a revolution against what? In January, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published a book titled, "How Democracies Die." In it, they write that in the decades since the end of the Cold War, liberal systems haven't been overthrown through force and military coups alone. More than anything else, democracy has been undermined non-violently through the election of anti-democratic politicians. The book was written in light of Donald Trump's victory in the U.S., but Germany, too, seems to be on the verge of a turning point. By the end of this year, the AfD is likely to hold seats in every state legislature in Germany. And it has already put forward one of its own -- a conspiracy theorist who predicts the imminent collapse of the euro -- to chair the budget committee in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, which oversees annual government spending of 350 billion euros ($411 billion). A Turning Point The AfD was the strongest party in the eastern state of Saxony in the last Bundestag elections, and across the east, it has now become such a force that the CDU has been compelled to express what would have been unfathomable not too long ago: the possibility of governing together with the far-left Left Party. The unrest in Chemnitz in August marked a turning point for the AfD. There, the party joined a phalanx of agitators and neo-Nazis, with the AfD's Thuringia state chapter leader Björn Höcke marching side-by-side with an activist from Pegida -- the anti-Islam and anti-immigrant group -- who has multiple criminal convictions on his record. For years, politics in Germany had been shaped by the old polarity between left and right. But those days are over. The question of identity now seems to be more important, which seemingly scrambles the party system. Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party is creating a new movement called "Aufstehen," German for "Stand Up," that she hopes will be a magnet for voters who would like to see a bigger welfare state and fewer immigrants. The move places additional pressure on the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has fluctuated between a culture of welcoming refugees and warnings of a loss of control since the refugee crisis. The business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), meanwhile, has morphed into a law and order party. And the only thing still holding the CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister party, together is the fear of losing power. The only parties that seem to be profiting from the new political complexities are the Greens and the AfD. So, how to deal with a party that fulminates against the mainstream with such abandon while at the spreading its own tentacles further into the center of society, into gov...http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/how-the-alternative-for-germany-has-transformed-the-country-a-1227360.html

LOU ANDREAS-SALOMÉ: The Audacity to be Free Review - Shockya.com (blog)

Pieske), her teens (Liv Lisa Fries), her middle years (Katharina Lorenz), and her older and still wiser self (Nicole Heesters).Filmed by Matthias Schllenberg in Germany (Lower Saxony, Ludwigsburg, Potsdam) , Vienna, Trentino-Alto Adige in Italy), and from time to time with a striking visual effect revealing scenery with characters walking through what looks like a trompe l’oeil, “Lou Andreas-Salomé” is thematically consistent throughout. We see a woman who at first with no problem struggling through a conflict despite the oppressive conventions of her time. She is determined never to marry, never to be intimate, never to be subjected to the will of any man. She believes, as well, that intimacy comes with a price: erotic closeness would curtain her intellectual development. It takes time for her to reconsider, giving herself to a man first in her early thirties. And her marriage to Friedrich Carl Andreas (Merab Ninidze), a scholar without much personality, remains unconsummated as she demands. It seems that men could not get enough of her, despite her requiring Platonic relationships, with no less than Friedrich Nietzsche (Alexander Scheer with a bushier mustache than John Bolton), and Paul Rée (Philipp Haus) who competes with Nietzsche for her attentions. Still they agree to hang out as a threesome.Her world turns around when she meets Rainer Maria Rilke (Julius Feldmeier). Passion is unleashed. As we watch her ecstasy during their lovemaking and the smile she sports throughout the next day with her hair down, we simply know that she will be carrying on affairs with many others, including a young doctor Pineles (Daniel Sträser) and possibly even Dr. Sigmund Freud (Harald Schrott), who wonders whether she is a classic narcissist.The flawless acting does credit to its central character, and the men in her life exude various degrees of emotion while trying their best to repress their sexual needs. What the film evokes ultimately is that you can be a feminist, an intellectual, a writer, even a hard-to-get player, and still maintain around you an array of men who would do anything—bring her flowers, cut their wrists, divorce their wives, write over-the-top poetry—just to revel in the aura she exudes.Unrated. 118 minutes. © 2018 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics OnlineStory – A-Acting – ATechnical – A-Overall – A-Movie Review DetailsHarvey KartenReview Date2018-04-11Reviewed ItemLOU ANDREAS-SALOMÉ: The Audacity to be FreeAuthor Rating...http://www.shockya.com/news/2018/04/11/lou-andreas-salome-the-audacity-to-be-free/

In the Studio with Ruby Barber, the Florist Behind Berlin-Based Mary Lennox - W Magazine

Ruby Barber in her studio, photograph courtesy of Becca Crawford. Barber spends her days scouring Berlin’s parks for dry materials and visiting local growers in Brandenburg and Potsdam, returning to her studio to assemble dripping, plumed constructions from the spoils. While her regular haunts supply the materials for most of her creations, some of Barber’s favored brambles can only be found further afield—and sometimes for just a week or two at a time. In late summer, Dutch hydrangea farms dispose of several wheelbarrows’ worth of sun-crisped heads. On the island of Mallorca, the narrow country roads are littered with perfect gold-fringed palm fronds. In the southern Italian countryside, overgrown family greenhouses shelter dead plants that have dried perfectly in place. “No work needs to be done to make an installation from these things,” Barber says. “Nature’s done the work already.” The daughter of two contemporary art gallerists, Barber’s rise has coincided with a shift in the fashion and visual art worlds, where a growing appetite for living designs has put her abstract installations in high demand. “There’s an increasing desire in modern times to feel close to nature. People want more and more to incorporate that natural language into their lives, and brands are starting to understand that.” But Barber’s designs, commissioned to reinvigorate established labels, are so rich in color and texture as to risk eclipsing them altogether. At last year’s Saut Hermès, an equestrian competition sponsored by the French house at the Grand Palais in Paris, Barber hung enormous downy columns of tea-colored amaranth like stalactites from the glass-paneled ceilings of the Grand Palais. For Loro Piana’s Fall/Winter 2020 presentation, her team scoured the Lombardy region of Northern Italy, sourcing a medley of local plants to construct a garden inside of the mid century modern venue. The year has been a whirlwind for Barber; a steady stream of projects kept her bouncing between Hamburg, Paris and Milan until Germany’s recent lockdown order resulted in a sort of forced retreat. “It’s a relief in a way, and a chance to think about the sort of work I actually want to do,” she says of the imposed hiatus. Perhaps, while she’s confined to her apartment, Barber will make an exception to her no-flowers-in-the-home rule. Her window looks out onto a park, so she can keep an eye out for the first blooms. ...https://www.wmagazine.com/story/ruby-barber-mary-lennox-florist-berlin-interview/

Mary Louise Bowmar Knotts - Mountain Statesman

She was one of a kind, an inspiration in many ways and will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved her. Friends will be received at the Talbott Funeral Home, 56 N Brandenburg Street in Belington, on Saturday April 6, 2019, from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., the funeral hour, when final rites will be conducted from the funeral home chapel, with the Pastor Jo McCartney officiating. Interment will follow in the Woodsdale Memorial Park Cemetery near Grafton. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions can be made to the Samaritans Purse 801 Bamboo Road Boone, NC26807. Condolences can be made to the family at www.talbottfuneralhome.com. The Talbott Funeral Home of Belington is in charge of the arrangements for Mrs. Mary Louise Bowmar Knotts. https://mountainstatesman.com/article/mary-louise-bowmar-knotts

Far-right German politician starts a new party with a logo bearing a secret Nazi symbol - CNN

Thursday when his political ally Egbert Ermer told Spiegel that the "project of forming a political party has today started." He said this would be a "middle German movement," with branches in Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/11/europe/andre-poggenburg-afd-germany-far-right-scli-grm-intl/index.html

Germany may end coal use - Sunbury News

FILE---In this Jan.6, 2019 file photo water vapour rises from the cooling towers of the Joenschwalde lignite-fired power plant of Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG (LEAG) in Brandenburg, Germany. (Patrick Pleul/dpa via AP) File--- In this photo taken Aug. 27, 2018 bucket wheel digs for coal near the Hambach Forest near Dueren, Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Climate fight: Germany sets 2038 deadline to end coal use By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press Monday, January 28 BERLIN (AP) — In a pioneering move, a German government-appointed panel has recommended that Germany stop burning coal to generate electricity by 2038 at the latest, as part of efforts to curb climate change. The Coal Commission reached a deal early Saturday following months of wrangling that were closely watched by other coal-dependent countries. “We made it,” Ronald Pofalla, the head of the commission, told reporters in Berlin. “This is a historic effort.” Germany gets more than a third of its electricity fr...https://www.sunburynews.com/opinion/25027/germany-may-end-coal-use