Everything is connected

Bruce Liu, Chopin Gold Medal winner,
Warsaw 2021

Now don't go telling me I've got too much time on my hands. I have lots of time, yes, but it's still the year-end holidays and we're still effectively on Covid-lockdown, if you're in the especially vulnerable category and choose to be prudent about kissing strangers in the street and things like that. I like to think that I lean towards prudence.

One of my heroes, Bruce Liu of Montreal, the gold winner of last October's Chopin competition in Warsaw, has just signed up with Liu Kotow. They're big in the world of management of musical talents. I'm happy to see Bruce will have these promoters (Shannen Liu and Grzegorz Kotow) bringing him to the attention of more and more people who can appreciate his ability to wow at the piano keyboard.

Liu Kotow also manages a number of other world-class artists of the piano, as well as violinists, cellists and others, including conductors and ensembles. They manage the Van Cliburn International Competition, so I trust Bruce is in good hands.

Now to the "too much time on my hands" issue. Liu Kotow are a German organization. Their headquarters are at Schiffgraben 59 in Hanover, in Lower Saxony (Hannover, Niedersachsen). Hannover, whether with one n or two, is a kind of home town in my family. My mother was born in Celle, and in the old days before postal codes and that sort of thing, towns in Germany were regularly identified by a nearby big city. So "Celle" was routinely referred to as "Celle bei Hannover." 

I like to identify my home as "Berkeley bei San Francisco." Gives it a little boost, somehow. "Bei," incidentally, is the German word for "chez" as in Chez Panisse, Berkeley's famous restaurant you have to mortgage your children to afford and wait six months to get in. Alice Walker's restaurant, often credited with being the home of "California cuisine."

My cousin Daniela, from Hamburg, just wrote me she's moving in with her new love interest, who lives in Han(n)over, so there's that. Daniela also managed to dig up my mother's birth certificate some years ago, which I will reproduce for you here:

In German: 

Celle, am 30. März 1915

 

Erstwhile Provincial House of Midwifery,
Mühlenstraße 8, Celle, now repurposed as
the district court

Der Direktor der Provinzial-Hebammen-Lehranstalt in Celle zeigte an, daß von der Ehefrau des Bereiters Karl Schultheis, Anna Luise Berta geboren Rühmann, beide lutherischer Religion, wohnhaft bei ihrem Ehemann in Celle, Am heiligen Kreuz 9 zu Celle in der Hebammen-Lehranstalt am fünfundzwanzigsten März des Jahres tausend neunhundert fünfzehn nachmittags um neun dreiviertel Uhr ein Mädchen geboren worden sei und daß das Kind die Vornamen Klara Berta erhalten habe.

 

Vorstehend 16 Druckworte gestrichen

 

Der Standesbeamte

 

Austerfeld 

 

In English:

 

Celle, March 30, 1915

 

The director of the provincial Midwife Academy in Celle announced that to the wife of the Bereiter Karl Schultheis, Anna Luise Berta, née Rühmann, both of the Lutheran religion, residing with her husband in Celle, Am Heiligen Kreuz 9, in Celle at the Midwife Academy on the twenty-fifth of March in the year one thousand ninehundred fifteen in the after noon at nine and three quarter hours a girl was born and that the child received the forenames Klara Berta.

 

(16 printed words stricken)

 

The Registrar

 

Austerfeld

Am heiligen Kreuz (Holy Cross St.) today, Celle

Holy Cross Number 9 is the address of the place where my grandmother grew up - I've got a schoolbook with an arithmetic textbook her sister wrote her name and address in when she was about eight years old.

Now when you go to Google Maps and check the distance between Am Heiligen Kreuz 9 in Celle and Schiffgraben 59 in Han(n)over, you find it is precisely 43 kilometers via Highway B3, and Google tells you you should be able to drive that in 38 minutes. Depending on traffic, obviously. Or two hours and thirteen minutes by bicycle. It's a little less (39.9 km) if you go by foot, but that would take you, Google informs us, about eight hours and nine minutes. I've always wondered who they used to calculate distance on foot, how long his or her legs were, how often they needed to stop to pee.

But I digress.

Am heiligen Kreuz 9, the actual house
now has a bank on the ground floor.

Time to go down to breakfast. The house feels empty, since friend Bill left to go home to Indiana yesterday after spending the year-end holidays with us again this year and we're back to just Taku and me and the girls, now scratching at the guest room door and wondering what happened to their Uncle Bill.

photo credits

Bruce Liu - https://www.iheartradio.ca/virginradio/windsor/canadian-bruce-liu-wins-18th-chopin-international-piano-competition-1.16320277

Midwifery Institute - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landeshebammenlehranstalt_Celle

Am heiligen Kreuz today - https://www.alamy.com/fachwerkhuser-am-heiligen-kreuz-celle-niedersachsen-deutschland-image334198726.html

the actual house at Number 9 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celle,_Am_Heiligen_Kreuz_9.jpg