Puppy school

We live in a neighborhood surrounded by green. Behind us is a beautiful cemetery with open green spaces for people to hang out (where I've not spent much time since getting a dog; they're forbidden in the cemetery), next to that are the community gardens and on the other side of our building is a big school field.
But on a sunny afternoon, I like to take my 4 year old Basset to the path that winds between 4 new large apartment buildings. These apartments are full of young families and the children come out to greet my dog and we have, what I call "puppy school."

Bassets have a reputation of being friendly to other dogs and small children, but as Penny excels at being the laziest of bassets, she's also the friendliest of bassets. Kids can sometimes be unnerved by her droopy eyes, which expose some of her third eyelid, but they love her massive paws and her strange stature. With Penny (who has immense patience for small humans), the children learn how to approach a dog. They stick a hand out to pat her head and then pull it quickly back when Penny thrusts her head forward to sniff their hand. "Sie wollte mich bissen!" (she wanted to bite me!) they say. I then explain that dogs need to smell things that come near them. They don't know names and so they have to have a sniff of a person as an introduction. The children then let Penny sniff them and are rewarded with a doggy tummy as she throws her short body on the grass or asphalt and they learn which parts a dog likes to have rubbed. They learn that when a dog moves it's head quickly, it means that they are not pleased or curious.
Last night, we had some friends to dinner and thy brought their sweet son Lars. Lars knows Penny and seemed less nervous around her with his increasing height. He learned quickly - as many children do - that Penny respects a "no!" or "stop!" from a child more than any other command from anyone else. He played with her with a pingpong ball and when she gave it back to him without crushing it, he would give her a treat. He did this by letting her take it and then feeling around her teeth as she tried to take it in her mouth without chewing his fingers. Luckily, she's good at this, but we had to remind Lars that only doctors should investigate an animal's teeth.
There came a time where Penny was taking a well-deserved rest from playing with a toddler. "Penny Ufstah!" (Penny get up!) lars said over and over. Penny offered her belly in a show of disinterest and we explained to Lars that she needed a rest. "Schlaf guet" said Lars and he went to give her a good night kiss on her side. He then thought it was funny to try to kiss her nose. "Hünde han das nüt gern Lars" (Dogs don't like that Lars) his parents told him. But he gave it a few more goes and Penny lunged for him. My heart was in my throat. I was devastated. Lars seemed ok, but i was so fearful that we may have just given him a life-long fear of dogs. His mother - who has admitted a "respect for dogs" in the past - calmly and off-handedly told him that that is Penny saying no more kisses on the nose. Lars giggled and kissed Penny on the rump and Penny pretended to relax (her shoulder would show any dog-owner that she was not truly relaxed.)
We got Lars to play a different game and all was forgiven. At the time that Lars was trying to kiss Penny and I was on the other side of the room and it was Ivo that was overseeing the interaction (along with Lars' mother.) I think that I'll need to train Ivo in the art of puppy school. 

throwback thursday

Last night, Ivo and I watched Gattaca to prompt discussion on an initiative that's up for a vote this June. The initiative is about whether or not to allow genetic testing on embryos before they're implanted via IVF.
During the film, I told Ivo "People used to give each other locks of their hair as a romantic gesture - I wish that I had a lock of mom's hair from before she got sick." And then  I stumbled across this lock of my hair in my wooden keepsake box today. (Who am I kidding? My whole apartment is my husband and my keepsake box.)
On Halloween 1997, I fainted on my way out to celebrate with friends. Two of us were dressed as Spice Girls, and I was sporty spice (I was under-weight enough from a summer of illness, that I could have been posh spice.) I didn't trust my body enough to go out and my loving sister - who was in town and remains one of the best caretakers I know - stayed home with me to keep me company and make sure that I didn't collapse again.
The fainting and some other symptoms made it clear to me that I was beginning my second flare-up of IBD, which was disappointing because I'd just had my lower intestine removed and was supposedly cured of my ulcerative colitits. But it would turn out that I had Crohn's disease and I knew it that night. I knew that I'd have to go back on high doses of steroids and antibiotics, that my hair would thin and my moustache would come back with a vengeance. As I told my sister all of this, she said "you could shave your head." She reminded me that I had the power to choose when and how much hair I would lose if I shaved it. So I called my Christmas Ball date and asked if he'd still go with me if I shaved my head and he said yes so we got to it.
We chopped off my sporty-spice ponytail and then indiscriminately chopped at my hair, which was full of drugs from my last hospitalization. She'd just gotten a tattoo that day so I took the business card from the tattoo parlor and taped a lock of my cut hair on it and saved it.
That night, mom was out celebrating Halloween and called to check up on me. I had a towel around my neck and sat in a circle of my hair scraps on a sheet that we'd laid out on the living room floor and told mom that Kendra was shaving my head. "Is that what you want?" my mom asked, with a kind voice. "Oh yeah!"
Mom returned to the group with whom she was celebrating and said "I had to check in. One of my daughters is sick and she's shaving her head." One of the people in the group sighed and said "oh! sick? like.....sick?" and pointed to her head. Mom told me about it later, while she was stroking my fuzzy, round head. "Your head is so round because you're a C-section baby." She told me.
I still think that there's no better time in life to shave one's head than as a teenager. Although, the first time I went to church with my mom after shaving it, I offered to wear a hat or a scarf. "No!" she said "someone will think that you're sick and they'll pray for you!"
"But I am sick!" I told her.
But it was true. With my low weight and bald head, I did look more like a cancer patient than someone whose immune system was attacking her guts.

10/31/97 Keng gets a tattoo I go Bald

Christmas Ball - after 5 weeks of growth

A to Z challenge affirmation

Yesterday, my husband and I went to the Landesmusem for the 1515 Marignano exhibit. We passed by Needle Park (mentioned in my D post) and entered their temporary building, which has been erected for use while a large portion of the building is being renovated.
On our way there, Ivo was sharing facts about the exhibit and we quickly realized that I knew just as much as he did about many of the memorable bits about the wars that supposedly led to the Swiss being officially recognized as a neutral state.
While much of the information was known to me, it was very cool to see the costumes and tools and armament and banners on the 16th century Swiss who were fighting other peoples wars for them. I just had to avoid the multimedia room with graphic films about the fighting. I also got to see the original inspiration for the papal guard, which I'd written about in my V post!

picture property of Landesmuseum Zürich

2nd of May

water canons at stauffacher 2009

My first May 1st in Switzerland was sunny and warm. We went to the proper parade after the illegals parade and then dined behind the police station and escaped to our neighborhood before the schwarze block bashed through.
That night, we went to dinner and a movie and I felt profoundly guilty taking advantage of businesses that made their workers work on worker's day. But we walked to both places and took a tour of the destruction on our way. Bus shelters were shattered, the high-end car dealership around the corner from our place was smashed to bits and a woman who should have been taking the day off was cleaning up the glass shards.
Since that day, that same car dealership has hosted a grill party for a group of hells angels any time that labor day was sunny. The dealership provides the grills, meats and benches and the hells angels provide security.
Now I have a basset hound, I can't go anywhere near any teargassed areas. (The poor dear suffers from it.) Plus the weather has been poor the last few May days, (so much for April showers bringing May flowers.) I had actually intended to go this year, as so many of my friends now have small children and want to expose them to the more wholesome and political parts of the day. But the weather (and a vicious sore throat) kept me away.) An early morning pre-rain walk with my dog today revealed that the rain hadn't just kept me away yesterday. The bus shelters were still standing and I didn't see one broken window.
So I missed out on this important annual celebration, but Eurovision is just around the corner.....

cow catchers (crowd control vehicles) by Birzirksgebäude in 2009

Z is for Zürich

Happy Zürich. Photo by me

Bern may technically be the capital of Switzerland, but Zürich is the largest city. It is 2000 years old this year but was called Turicum back then. It's the wealthiest city in Europe and has been rated the city with the best quality of life in the world in several surveys (this in addition to Switzerland being named the happiest country in the world last week; so Zürich is the most pleasant city in the happiest country - - and full of banks.) Zürich was the capital back on and off throughout Swiss history (ever-changing throughout those wars that I wrote about in previous posts.)
Zürich's parliament has been majority left for the past few years. Our mayor is a member of the social democrat party and she's been leading the city for 6 years. It's one of the leading cities in protecting the climate, as of a 2008 referendum that promises to reduce the carbon footprint of each resident by one tonne by 2050. This will be achieved with new hospital policies, new bike-only areas, research projects on renewable energy and an ever-evolving public transport system.
Zürich's official language is (Swiss) German and as of 2008, the first language taught in schools after German is no longer French (one of the country's four languages) but English. As an native-English speaking immigrant, I'm not so thrilled about this. This might be because I currently teach english to all those adults who learned French and / or Italian at school, but also because I love that Switzerland is multilingual and am always mildly disappointed when I hear people from different linguistic areas of Switzerland reverting to speaking English with one another.

Y is for the Y Chromosome

Photo care of diewelt.de

Patricia Arquette thinks that it's time to talk about the pay gap now that women have solved the rights issues of homosexuals and African-Americans, so lets do it.
But seriously folks, to paraphrase John Gray, men are from Switzerland and women are from Switzerland and they don't earn the same, they don't work the same amounts and they don't come out to vote in the same numbers. Swiss men have birth control pill hormones in their drinking water and are more likely to kill themselves than their female counterparts are. If they're homosexual, they're nearly 5 times more likely to marry or be civilly partnered than a swiss lesbian couple and they're less likely to beat their female partners than citizens of many other countries.
Though many of my American friends think that I live in Sweden, Switzerland is actually a country all it's own and does not have nearly as comprehensive maternity and paternity leaves as Sweden (or any Scandinavian country.) We don't (yet) have state-funded preschools (though it is regularly proposed) and on average have the most expensive crèches in the world according to a 2014 study, so working parents are in the awkward position of one member working nearly exclusively for the price of childcare. Also, swiss children go home for lunch (more and more go to a daycare facility for lunch - but either way, lunch is not served in Swiss public schools) and have no lessons Wednesday afternoon, so many women in Switzerland choose to reduce their work schedule in favor of providing their own child care. 17% of Swiss women with children under the age of 25 work full time compared to the 88% of Swiss men who work "100%." Men earn 19% more than their female counterparts as of a census in 2012.

X is for XXX sex industry in Switzerland

Back when I had my hen night and (as discussed in th F post, we learned some swiss folk dances) some of my kind American friends braved the sex shop down the road from my place and bought me saucy gifts. It was....not the sex-positive (see: clean and run by cheerful and helpful women) and very different from those that these California and New York residents were used to. This sex shop has since closed and is reportedly going to be a new branch of a popular asian fusion restaurant soon.
When I returned to Switzerland from a year in San Francisco, a search to get a European adapter for a marital aid led me to a shop that is open by appointment and sweetly called "clit care." Had this shop existed or been known to me in 2007, I might have been able to show my American friends that sex-positive shops can be found here as well. Alas, that was not the case.
Another thing that happened when we returned from our year in California (and this was the night that we arrived home) we sat eating pizza and watching a political roundtable news program and there was a debate about whether or not there should be rules in place to limit cell phone use by prostitutes when they're working with a client. "Text messaging is one thing, but taking and making phone calls when they're with a client is unprofessional." It was then that I knew that I was truly home.
That year, we also got to vote for safe places for prostitutes who prefer to serve (or have customers who prefer to be served) in cars. They approved proposal was for a parking area that would be patrolled by police for the sex-worker's safety. The parking structure is constructed in a way that would make it impossible for the driver to exit the car, while providing space for the passenger's side to be opened, and hopefully create safer conditions for sex-workers. Those women who use those the "sex boxes" have to have the same permits and pay the same taxes that workers in brothels do, and they're also provided laundry facilities, showers and a café for breaks.
Sex work in Europe is of course never entirely safe. Though pimping is illegal and brothels and prostitution are legal for adults with the correct permits, there is always a risk of women being trafficked. But Switzerland has done their best to make sure that this "inevitable" service is done as safely and sanely as possible.
As far as pornography is concerned, Switzerland worked between 2006 and 2014 to fine tune their ban or hard core pornography. According to the current criminal code, they not only forbid the production of porn with children under 16, those children must also appear to be 18. The idea being that a 16 year old who still looks pubescent or pre-pubescent may not be filmed in pornography. (The age of legal poor consumption is also 16, which would play a role in any cases that may arise from adolescent "sexting") The other sorts of hard core porn have been tweaked and the presence or urine or scat is now no longer considered hard core. There are certain levels of S&M pornography that are forbidden, but the main focus of criminal code 311.0 are concerned with child pornography.