Little bit of a rant. There is no deeper meaning.
We do not consider what we have to be a lawn - it is more of a field. 2.5 acres give or take, (thank heavens part of our property is wooded) of sometimes very steep sloping grass that really should be mowed. It will get away from you quick, if you don't.
Here's the problem. Almost all of the lower 48 states are experiencing a drought. North Carolina is one of 2 or 3 states among these 48 that have no counties in a drought situation. In fact, it pretty much won't stop raining. It rained for hours early Sunday morning, then rained for hours - hard - late Sunday evening. As I type this, it is getting dark again, and looks like rain. I think it has rained everyday expect one for the last week.
I managed to mow a large section of grass Saturday afternoon. It was a struggle. I know you are supposed to mow when the grass is dry - but it never gets dry. It hasn't been dry since sometime in early July, I think. It is saturated with dew in the mornings, and in the afternoon, it rains. So the ol' John Deere kept getting clogged up, I'd shut off the blade, back up, and there would be tons of wet clumpy grass on the ground. Awhile later I'd have to repeat the process. I tried to do this in out of the way places - near the "grape vine" or the Mulberry tree, but for the most part I couldn't. When I was done and surveyed the field, instead of seeing neatly trimmed grass, I saw disgusting rows of wet clumpy grass clippings, the type that will eventually kill everything underneath it.
We cleaned the mower - me first then my wife took over - and pulled out a ton more grass, as much as we could get. I'm sure there's a lot left there.
And of course, later that evening, it began to rain.
So this afternoon I did something I vowed I would never do on this property. We raked. Or gathered. We raked the grass into piles, then picked the grass up and put into a trash can (20 gallon I think), then carried it to where where the weeds and briers live and dumped it out. All told I think we had around 40 piles of grass, maybe more, because I didnt start counting 'till there were less than 20 left, and that didn't even represent half of our little field.
It wasn't terribly hot, low to mid-80's, (about 28-29 Celsius for the rest of the world) but it was extremely humid, and wet grass is rather heavy, and I had to carry it uphill, so I was huffing and puffing and sweating like a pig on Thanksgiving day before I was done.
I don't know that it made any difference. Next time I mow I'll put the blade at the highest setting, maybe that will help.
In the mean time, if it would just stop raining for a week or two, that would be nice.
End of rant.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
My Mother's Birthday
Today is my mother's birthday.
My mother died 3 years ago, on August 24th, in a hospital room at the Appalachian Regional Hospital in Hazard, Kentucky. Hazard is the big city on those parts. She had been very sick for awhile, I had gone to see her then came back, and was planning to go again when I got a call from my brother on the evening of the 23rd. I left the next morning, but did not get there in time. I got a call on my cell as I was pulling into a gas station at Gate City, Virginia.
The older I get the more people die, and I think the concept of a "dignified" death is something people made up. My mother suffered, to the point that my father finally told everybody - meaning the doctors - to stop. She was old, and was very unlikely to recover no matter what they did, so he told them to stop. He didn't receive any argument from anybody, neither family nor doctors. Everybody knew. They moved her out of intensive care, managed the pain, and she died a day or so later.
I remember when I was little. We had 33 acres of prime (ahem) hill top property in Hindman, Kentucky. I'd run around barefoot (we always said barefooted), and I learned that if I just ran thru the yard the bees generally got out of the way. I was always a little afraid of the snakes, but they seemed to get out of the way too. I was invincible. But even at that early age I knew about death, though I didn't really understand it. I remember telling myself I had nothing to worry about, because only old people died and by the time I was old, someone would have found a cure for death. I was all of 5 years old.
The first part of my self delusion was shattered when a 1st cousin, and my best friend, drowned in Troublesome Creek when it was swollen with spring rains. I remember him as smart, inquisitive and curious, and he was younger than me. He was only 7 years old when he died. I was 8.
The second part of my self delusion went by the wayside a long time ago. People die. They die for all kinds of reasons, but mostly they just get sick and die. True, as a group, at least in the developed world, we tend to live somewhat longer than we used to, but we don't live forever. Or even that long, for that matter.
On my mother's last birthday she was in a hospital bed. She was conscious and aware, but had tubes helping her breathe and could not communicate. She had endured a couple of operations, she was in pain and she was extremely uncomfortable. When I left her for the last time, she didn't want me to go. Even though she couldn't speak, everybody knew why. Well I can't speak for anyone else, but I knew why.
So today is my mom's birthday, and I've been thinking about her off and on all day.
My mother died 3 years ago, on August 24th, in a hospital room at the Appalachian Regional Hospital in Hazard, Kentucky. Hazard is the big city on those parts. She had been very sick for awhile, I had gone to see her then came back, and was planning to go again when I got a call from my brother on the evening of the 23rd. I left the next morning, but did not get there in time. I got a call on my cell as I was pulling into a gas station at Gate City, Virginia.
The older I get the more people die, and I think the concept of a "dignified" death is something people made up. My mother suffered, to the point that my father finally told everybody - meaning the doctors - to stop. She was old, and was very unlikely to recover no matter what they did, so he told them to stop. He didn't receive any argument from anybody, neither family nor doctors. Everybody knew. They moved her out of intensive care, managed the pain, and she died a day or so later.
I remember when I was little. We had 33 acres of prime (ahem) hill top property in Hindman, Kentucky. I'd run around barefoot (we always said barefooted), and I learned that if I just ran thru the yard the bees generally got out of the way. I was always a little afraid of the snakes, but they seemed to get out of the way too. I was invincible. But even at that early age I knew about death, though I didn't really understand it. I remember telling myself I had nothing to worry about, because only old people died and by the time I was old, someone would have found a cure for death. I was all of 5 years old.
The first part of my self delusion was shattered when a 1st cousin, and my best friend, drowned in Troublesome Creek when it was swollen with spring rains. I remember him as smart, inquisitive and curious, and he was younger than me. He was only 7 years old when he died. I was 8.
The second part of my self delusion went by the wayside a long time ago. People die. They die for all kinds of reasons, but mostly they just get sick and die. True, as a group, at least in the developed world, we tend to live somewhat longer than we used to, but we don't live forever. Or even that long, for that matter.
On my mother's last birthday she was in a hospital bed. She was conscious and aware, but had tubes helping her breathe and could not communicate. She had endured a couple of operations, she was in pain and she was extremely uncomfortable. When I left her for the last time, she didn't want me to go. Even though she couldn't speak, everybody knew why. Well I can't speak for anyone else, but I knew why.
So today is my mom's birthday, and I've been thinking about her off and on all day.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Nope, I'm not a writer
I don't have much in common with writers, which is no big surprise.
Writers write. They write everyday. They set goals for themselves and fret about it if they don't quite get there. If they aren't writing they worry about it. They edit & rewrite. No matter what else they have going on, they find time. They keep notebooks close at hand in case they think of something, see something, hear something or someone says something interesting - an idea, word, phrase, insight, anything. They struggle to find the right word. Writers also read, a lot. But mostly, they write, every day.
I haven't written too much in this blog for 3 months, and I haven't worried about it too much. And though it's irrelevant, nothing of what I have written is really worth much of anything except to me. Worth is important to a writer.
I haven't written a short story in several years.
My favorite one, way back when, was about a woman and a snake. The woman, the snake, and a little dog were the only characters in the book. It took place early in the morning, with the woman sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee trying to wake up. She had to get cleaned up and ready for work, and she also she also had a young child who was asleep, but who she would have to wake up soon, get cleaned up, dressed, fed and ready for day care. She had a very busy morning ahead of her, and that was before she got to work. She was also married, but her husband was out of town on business. So her child and her husband are also characters, but they are in the background, they exist, but they never make an appearance.
Her being married and having a child was no accident - I remember actually thinking about this. I could have made her a single parent, or a single woman living on her own, but I decided to giver her a child and a temporarily absent husband. It seem to make things more interesting, because for a few days she was thrust into a role she wasn't used to, and wasn't really prepared for, essentially she was a single parent.
The whole story is her thoughts and the comments of an unseen narrator who seems to know everything there is to know about her. One thing the narrator knows is that the woman considers her husband being away as something of a vacation for her - one less person to worry about, except late at night in a dark, creaking almost-in-the-country house when she feels not quite scared, but uneasy. The only dialogue in the story is between her and the dog.
So the conflict in the story (all stories have conflict) comes when the little dog starts going ballistic at the front door, and the woman opens the door to find a big snake on her front porch, right outside the door. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. After the initial shock, she's irritated because dealing with the snake would normally fall under the auspices of the husband's duties, he man that he is, but he's gone, so she has to deal with it. The rest of the story is how she deals with it.
It involves gasoline.
So I used to write stories, but I don't anymore. Writers have to pay attention to the human condition, and that takes concentration and a decent amount of insight. I can concentrate, but I'm not sure I have the insight.
In the book I'm reading now, the protagonist is surprised find his teenage daughter understands "the value of an endorsement from a fool". Which, of course, is nothing. Less than nothing, to be honest. And that's in the bible too, Proverbs I think, but maybe Psalms. Or maybe somewhere else. It goes something like this: "Its better to be thought merely good by the great, than great by the merely good". It's human condition stuff.
Anyway, writing can be fun, but I'm not a writer.
Writers write. They write everyday. They set goals for themselves and fret about it if they don't quite get there. If they aren't writing they worry about it. They edit & rewrite. No matter what else they have going on, they find time. They keep notebooks close at hand in case they think of something, see something, hear something or someone says something interesting - an idea, word, phrase, insight, anything. They struggle to find the right word. Writers also read, a lot. But mostly, they write, every day.
I haven't written too much in this blog for 3 months, and I haven't worried about it too much. And though it's irrelevant, nothing of what I have written is really worth much of anything except to me. Worth is important to a writer.
I haven't written a short story in several years.
My favorite one, way back when, was about a woman and a snake. The woman, the snake, and a little dog were the only characters in the book. It took place early in the morning, with the woman sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee trying to wake up. She had to get cleaned up and ready for work, and she also she also had a young child who was asleep, but who she would have to wake up soon, get cleaned up, dressed, fed and ready for day care. She had a very busy morning ahead of her, and that was before she got to work. She was also married, but her husband was out of town on business. So her child and her husband are also characters, but they are in the background, they exist, but they never make an appearance.
Her being married and having a child was no accident - I remember actually thinking about this. I could have made her a single parent, or a single woman living on her own, but I decided to giver her a child and a temporarily absent husband. It seem to make things more interesting, because for a few days she was thrust into a role she wasn't used to, and wasn't really prepared for, essentially she was a single parent.
The whole story is her thoughts and the comments of an unseen narrator who seems to know everything there is to know about her. One thing the narrator knows is that the woman considers her husband being away as something of a vacation for her - one less person to worry about, except late at night in a dark, creaking almost-in-the-country house when she feels not quite scared, but uneasy. The only dialogue in the story is between her and the dog.
So the conflict in the story (all stories have conflict) comes when the little dog starts going ballistic at the front door, and the woman opens the door to find a big snake on her front porch, right outside the door. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. After the initial shock, she's irritated because dealing with the snake would normally fall under the auspices of the husband's duties, he man that he is, but he's gone, so she has to deal with it. The rest of the story is how she deals with it.
It involves gasoline.
So I used to write stories, but I don't anymore. Writers have to pay attention to the human condition, and that takes concentration and a decent amount of insight. I can concentrate, but I'm not sure I have the insight.
In the book I'm reading now, the protagonist is surprised find his teenage daughter understands "the value of an endorsement from a fool". Which, of course, is nothing. Less than nothing, to be honest. And that's in the bible too, Proverbs I think, but maybe Psalms. Or maybe somewhere else. It goes something like this: "Its better to be thought merely good by the great, than great by the merely good". It's human condition stuff.
Anyway, writing can be fun, but I'm not a writer.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Our eBay (and Etsy) Month - July 2012
Just coasting along......
July was our best month this year, at least as far as net profits went. As far as I'm concerned, net is what counts, and our net profits for the month were very good. I know what happened, but I really don't know why it happened.
Our postcard and photo sales were both close to the most we've sold in a single month period all year, and when that happens we have a good month. We've had months where we've sold more of one or the other, but not where both were this good - at least not this year.
Also, for some reason we sold an extraordinary amount internationally - I believe international sales accounted for almost 1/3rd or our sales, and that is a lot for us. I believe this this is the most we've ever sold internationally in a month, but I've only been tracking that for a couple of years now. eBay has been tracking it for us since day 1, however, so I can report with a fair amount of accuracy that in the 6 years and 3 days we've had this business going, international sales have accounted for roughly 12.5% of our total sales. I don't know if that is good, bad, or otherwise, but it is what it is.
I like international sales, I hope it keeps up.
Sometimes you have a good month because you find some special inventory. We did have some good inventory this month, but nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary. But we had some items which were unique, and which sold quickly for a decent profit - but even without that it still would have been a very good month. So I don't really know how to explain it.
Our Etsy sales were decent, but not that much better than in June.
Traditionally the summer months are slower - June, July & August. Well this year May and June were terrible, so I figured we were in for a slow 5 months. So I'll very happily take a good July.
I was worried that sales might be slower, because we're no longer have top rated seller status. This is because eBay changed their criteria, and we felt the costs outweighed the benefits of trying to meet it. So we made a business decision to stay the course so to speak.
Well that's not quite true - we moved part of our business to Etsy, and it seems to be working ok.
August has started out ok for us, but we're in the hole a bit because of some business expenses we had to make. Costs money to make money as the say.
July was our best month this year, at least as far as net profits went. As far as I'm concerned, net is what counts, and our net profits for the month were very good. I know what happened, but I really don't know why it happened.
Our postcard and photo sales were both close to the most we've sold in a single month period all year, and when that happens we have a good month. We've had months where we've sold more of one or the other, but not where both were this good - at least not this year.
Also, for some reason we sold an extraordinary amount internationally - I believe international sales accounted for almost 1/3rd or our sales, and that is a lot for us. I believe this this is the most we've ever sold internationally in a month, but I've only been tracking that for a couple of years now. eBay has been tracking it for us since day 1, however, so I can report with a fair amount of accuracy that in the 6 years and 3 days we've had this business going, international sales have accounted for roughly 12.5% of our total sales. I don't know if that is good, bad, or otherwise, but it is what it is.
I like international sales, I hope it keeps up.
Sometimes you have a good month because you find some special inventory. We did have some good inventory this month, but nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary. But we had some items which were unique, and which sold quickly for a decent profit - but even without that it still would have been a very good month. So I don't really know how to explain it.
Our Etsy sales were decent, but not that much better than in June.
Traditionally the summer months are slower - June, July & August. Well this year May and June were terrible, so I figured we were in for a slow 5 months. So I'll very happily take a good July.
I was worried that sales might be slower, because we're no longer have top rated seller status. This is because eBay changed their criteria, and we felt the costs outweighed the benefits of trying to meet it. So we made a business decision to stay the course so to speak.
Well that's not quite true - we moved part of our business to Etsy, and it seems to be working ok.
August has started out ok for us, but we're in the hole a bit because of some business expenses we had to make. Costs money to make money as the say.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Our eBay (and Etsy) month - June 2012
Hmmm.........I need to write more in this blog. Well, it's been a busy month..... Anyway.
Basically our totals for June were almost the same as for May, which is to say somewhere between not too good and better than nothing.
We actually did a little better in June, but the only reason we made more of a profit was because our expenses were less. While that's nice, it's not really the hallmark of an expanding business.
Our eBay sales were slightly higher for the month, and distributed a bit differently. We sold more photos and fewer postcards in June than we did in May. Our Etsy sales were slightly lower in June than they were in May. Our overall business expenses were lower, and that is why we made a profit.
Our business expense was lower because we paid less postage, which again, is nice, but also indicates that we didn't ship as much.
But a couple of good things did happen. We had several "multiple purchase" transactions, and our international sales jumped right back to what I consider normal levels. We've started off pretty good international sales wise in July, so I hope that continues.
The end of June was also the end of the 2nd quarter, so I can draw my quarterly conclusions, I suppose. We did much better in the first quarter 2012 than we did in the 2nd quarter. However, 1Q 2012 was 2nd best quarter we've had since I've been keeping these types of records (since 2009). We also did not do as well in as we did in the 2Q of 2011, but guess what, 2Q 2011 was the 3rd best quarter we've ever had, only slightly off 1Q 2012. Both quarters were dwarfed by 4Q of 2011. I've kept these records for 14 quarters now, and our last quarter results were slightly below average. I suppose I was spoiled by 2 straight quarters of much higher than average sales.
Last year's 3rd quarter was pretty bad, not the lowest we've ever had, but pretty close. I'm hoping this years 3Q results will be better. Stay tuned.
Basically our totals for June were almost the same as for May, which is to say somewhere between not too good and better than nothing.
We actually did a little better in June, but the only reason we made more of a profit was because our expenses were less. While that's nice, it's not really the hallmark of an expanding business.
Our eBay sales were slightly higher for the month, and distributed a bit differently. We sold more photos and fewer postcards in June than we did in May. Our Etsy sales were slightly lower in June than they were in May. Our overall business expenses were lower, and that is why we made a profit.
Our business expense was lower because we paid less postage, which again, is nice, but also indicates that we didn't ship as much.
But a couple of good things did happen. We had several "multiple purchase" transactions, and our international sales jumped right back to what I consider normal levels. We've started off pretty good international sales wise in July, so I hope that continues.
The end of June was also the end of the 2nd quarter, so I can draw my quarterly conclusions, I suppose. We did much better in the first quarter 2012 than we did in the 2nd quarter. However, 1Q 2012 was 2nd best quarter we've had since I've been keeping these types of records (since 2009). We also did not do as well in as we did in the 2Q of 2011, but guess what, 2Q 2011 was the 3rd best quarter we've ever had, only slightly off 1Q 2012. Both quarters were dwarfed by 4Q of 2011. I've kept these records for 14 quarters now, and our last quarter results were slightly below average. I suppose I was spoiled by 2 straight quarters of much higher than average sales.
Last year's 3rd quarter was pretty bad, not the lowest we've ever had, but pretty close. I'm hoping this years 3Q results will be better. Stay tuned.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Our eBay (and Etsy) month May 2012
This was our worst month in 2 years - literally. I looked. I had to go back to May 2010 to find a month when sales were lower. Sales were lower this month than that awful 3 month period in 2011 when I thought sales were so slow.
Now this is going to sound very simplistic, but the reason our gross and net amounts were so slow was because we didn't sell as much as we usually do. Sounds reasonable I suppose.
I track transactions per day and items sold per day (some transactions are for more than one item), and we had almost 2 transactions (with 2.8 items sold) per day fewer than normal. That adds up over the course of 31 days.
Every category I track was down, down, down. Sales of single postcards were off by about 30%, sales of photos off by about 50% (that really hurt).
Our international sales dropped off the charts. Normally international sales account for 20% or more of our total sales. Most of our international business goes to Canada, Western Europe and Australia, with a smattering of sales to other parts of the world. In May our international sales were the lowest they've been since I've been keeping records, and not by a little. A LOT! Had our international sales been normal, it still would not have been a great month, but it would have been a lot more reasonable.
Like most months, I live in a semi-fog with all this. I can tell what happened, but I can't tell why. I have no idea why our sales were down, or why the international sales were low. I can conjecture 'till I'm blue in the face, but the reality is I don't know. I know much of Europe is in a financial crisis of sorts, but I refuse to believe that this minuscule business is any kind of measure of the global economy.
As bad a month as it was, we still made a profit.
I don't subscribe to big business' definition of profit and loss. A large company I worked for many years ago had a profit of close to $600,000,000 one quarter, but because in the same quarter the previous year they had a profit of close to $800,000,000, managers called a meeting and told us with a straight face that we lost $200,000,000, as if we were responsible or could do anything about it. I'd look up at them and think "what assholes". While I understood that the profit for one quarter was significantly less than the profit during the same quarter of the previous year, I didn't understand how a profit of $600,000,000 could be construed as a loss of any kind. But in all fairness, I never took a business course in my life, so what do I know.
Anyway, we made a certain amount of money through sales, we had to spend a certain amount on things like fees for using eBay & PayPal, postage, packaging supplies and so on. The amount we spent on expenses was less than the amount we made on sales, hence we made profit, at least in my naive little brain. It wasn't as much as we usually do, but still, we did not lose money.
That being said, I sure hope sales pick up. June, July & August are typically the slowest months of the year for us, so that may be wishful thinking. But whatever, we'll keep plugging away, and eventually the sales will come our way. I reckon.
Now this is going to sound very simplistic, but the reason our gross and net amounts were so slow was because we didn't sell as much as we usually do. Sounds reasonable I suppose.
I track transactions per day and items sold per day (some transactions are for more than one item), and we had almost 2 transactions (with 2.8 items sold) per day fewer than normal. That adds up over the course of 31 days.
Every category I track was down, down, down. Sales of single postcards were off by about 30%, sales of photos off by about 50% (that really hurt).
Our international sales dropped off the charts. Normally international sales account for 20% or more of our total sales. Most of our international business goes to Canada, Western Europe and Australia, with a smattering of sales to other parts of the world. In May our international sales were the lowest they've been since I've been keeping records, and not by a little. A LOT! Had our international sales been normal, it still would not have been a great month, but it would have been a lot more reasonable.
Like most months, I live in a semi-fog with all this. I can tell what happened, but I can't tell why. I have no idea why our sales were down, or why the international sales were low. I can conjecture 'till I'm blue in the face, but the reality is I don't know. I know much of Europe is in a financial crisis of sorts, but I refuse to believe that this minuscule business is any kind of measure of the global economy.
As bad a month as it was, we still made a profit.
I don't subscribe to big business' definition of profit and loss. A large company I worked for many years ago had a profit of close to $600,000,000 one quarter, but because in the same quarter the previous year they had a profit of close to $800,000,000, managers called a meeting and told us with a straight face that we lost $200,000,000, as if we were responsible or could do anything about it. I'd look up at them and think "what assholes". While I understood that the profit for one quarter was significantly less than the profit during the same quarter of the previous year, I didn't understand how a profit of $600,000,000 could be construed as a loss of any kind. But in all fairness, I never took a business course in my life, so what do I know.
Anyway, we made a certain amount of money through sales, we had to spend a certain amount on things like fees for using eBay & PayPal, postage, packaging supplies and so on. The amount we spent on expenses was less than the amount we made on sales, hence we made profit, at least in my naive little brain. It wasn't as much as we usually do, but still, we did not lose money.
That being said, I sure hope sales pick up. June, July & August are typically the slowest months of the year for us, so that may be wishful thinking. But whatever, we'll keep plugging away, and eventually the sales will come our way. I reckon.
Monday, May 28, 2012
More Books - Anne Frank
I've read several books in the past few weeks, and I've not been keeping this updated. I'm only going to write about one though, "The Diary of Anne Frank".
This makes the 3rd time I've read a version of this diary. This one was subtitled "the Definitive Edition", and I actually bought it in the 1990s. I probably haven't read it since 1995 or so.
There are 3 accepted versions of the diary, I think - Anne Frank's original version started in 1942 shortly before she and her family went into hiding (version a), the version she began editing in 1944 with an eye toward publication after the war (version b - she continued with the original diary while creating an edited version), and the version edited by her father (Otto Frank) and published in 1947 or 1948.
The Otto Frank version is the one I read in school in my early teens. He left a lot of stuff out, partly because of space constraints for the publisher, partly because some of the material was not appropriate for a young audience (though Anne was ages 13-15 when she wrote it), and partly because he was her father and she was his daughter. You know how that goes.
Otto Frank died in 1980 and he willed all his daughter's manuscripts to a foundation in Switzerland. Since then they've been studied, verified beyond a doubt, an edition has been published for scholars, and the "definitive" edition has been published for a more general population of readers. There are a lot of things in this book that were not in the version edited by Otto Frank, the version that I read as a student.
Anne and her family considered themselves German, but they were Jewish and when the Nazis came to power they emigrated to Holland, where they had a comfortable life. Her father was a manager in a small company involved in some kind of jam or jelly manufacturing - I'm not quite clear on that. I got the impression that her parents were functional but never quite fluent in Dutch. Anne and Margot, her older sister, were very fluent in Dutch, and I think Margo was fluent in German as well. I think Anne was comfortable speaking German, but treated Dutch as her native language. She was very young when they left Germany.
Their comfortable life lasted until 1940, when the Germans invaded the Netherlands, and began placing restrictions on Jews. She started her diary in the months after the invasion, and very early on she writes about all the restrictions, great and small, placed on the Jews.
This was written from her point of view, and Anne was young and was not aware of everything that was going on. I can assume that her father had made arrangements with some people they worked with to create a hiding place in an annex in his business place (which he was apparently restricted from working in) for his family and another family - 7 people in all. Things were getting bad, and they picked a date to go into hiding, but a wrench was thrown into their plans - Margot, Anne's older sister, received a "call-up" notice from the SS to report to such and such place at a certain time for a work detail in Germany. Of course they were going to send her off to a concentration camp and that would be the last anyone would see of Margot. So the Frank family went into hiding the very next day, a week earlier than originally planned, and they were followed shortly by the van Dann family (their real names were van Pels, but Anne gave them pseudonyms in version b of her diary). Some months later they were joined by a dentist who Anne gave the name Alfred Dussel (real name Fritz Pfeffer), who was also German but had been living in Holland for many years. So there were 8 people living in the "Secret Annex".
I have actually seen this "Secret Annex". I lived in Germany as a teenager (and again in my 20's), and our class took a trip to Amsterdam, and one of the places we visited was the Anne Frank "House". I remember the building was tall and narrow, very close to a canal and shared walls with neighboring buildings. I remember walking up narrow steps to the area where they actually hid - most of the building was offices and a warehouse. Here my memory is hazy - I don't remember many details, except that it was VERY SMALL. There have been a couple of movies based on the diary, and they all give the illusion that there was much more space than there actually was. Still, in a way they had it good - a lot of Jews in hiding were living in much worse conditions, and the ones that answered the call up notices were either murdered, or starved or died of disease in concentration camps.
I think of Anne Frank's diary as almost like two diaries in one. In one, she describes things that happened, and it can be fascinating. In the other she describes feelings - Anne was a young girl going through puberty during some very rough and unusual living conditions, so her feelings can be a pretty wild ride.
I'm sure it was a hard life, and it just got harder as time went on. 8 people forced to live in very close quarters, no way to get away from one another, very limited privacy, food becoming scarcer and scarcer, living in constant fear, it had to be very very stressful. There were personality conflicts, magnified by the close quarters. Anne spends a lot of time writing about the conflicts and stress (seems she was at the center of a lot of it) but I bet she only covered a fraction of what went on. They may have had it good in comparison to some, but they didn't have it easy. They apparently did their best to keep up routines, including school work, but it must have been very difficult.
There is a thing about secrets - the more people who know, the less secure they are. There were 8 people who were hidden in a small space for over 2 years, and they could not do it alone. They had to depend on help from others. The core was 4 people who worked in the office. As time went on, more people knew. One of the office worker's parents was informed and built a bookcase to conceal the entrance to the annex. It became obvious that other people didn't know for sure but suspected, and they were helpful for the most part.
Some things they could not be sure about though, and as I read the diary I realized that the longer things went on the harder it was to keep them secret. The people helping them were forced to deal with "black market" types, and some of those people were less than savory. Over time, they may have developed suspicions, something they could use to protect themselves in case they were arrested (it takes a lot of food & and illegal ration books to feed 8 people, during war time). The annex shared a wall with a business next door, none of whom were informed about their neighbors in hiding. It is hard for 8 people to be absolutely quiet. Something as simple as a cough or sneeze, or an ill timed bump against something might arouse suspicion - especially if repeated over time. They would sometimes open windows to get some fresh air, and on more than one occasion someone noticed some windows opened when no one was supposed to be there and mentioned it to one of the office workers.
And there were a series of 3 or 4 burglaries over a period of months - and in one burglary in particular, maybe two, it's possible that some of this small group of people in hiding were seen. It's even much more likely, in fact it's almost certain, that they were heard. It was their habit, after hours, to make use of the downstairs office space for various things - this was not the most secure thing to do considering their situation, but you can imagine their need to spread out. Also, after working hours, they weren't particularly quiet - they talked, flushed the toilet, lived their lives as normally as they could. It's possible, maybe even probable, that burglars were aware of them before they were aware of the burglars. In the end, this is probably what lead to their capture. I think it's pretty certain that one of the burglars turned them in - probably in return for some leniency. These burglaries were terrifying to Anne, and she describes them in detail.
Anne's diary ends on August 1, 1944. There was nothing special about the entry, nothing different, obviously she had no idea it was going to be her last one. Although she lived in fear of being found, she was also optimistic that they'd survive till the end of the war. They were arrested on August 4th, just a little over two years after they went into hiding. Apparently there was an SS sergeant in full uniform (who's complete name is given in the book), and 3 or 4 Dutch security people in plain clothes (but armed) who arrested the group and searched the annex for money and other valuables. They ignored Anne's diary. Later Miep Gies, one of the people who had hid them for 2 years, found it strewn all over the floor. She considered it private and never read it - she gave it to Anne's father after the war. Two of the people who hid them were arrested, but one released due to ill health, and another managed to escape.
As a group they had some very bad luck, timing wise. They had been there for over two years, if they could have lasted a few more months they probably would have survived the war. As it was they were on the last transport to leave Holland, and initially sent to Auswitz in Poland. Mr. Van Dann (van Pels) was gassed in October or November 1944, apparently among the last to meet that fate. The others were transferred from place to place. Anne's mother died in January 1945, from "hunger and exhaustion". Mrs van Dann was transferred to several camps, and it is certain she did not survive, but no one knows the date or location she died. I can't remember when Mr. Dussel died. Margot and Anne were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and they both died in a Typhoid epidemic that swept through the prison population - Margot in February 1945, and Anne in March 1945. Peter Van Dann who was a couple years older than Anne, and who Anne became very close to during the years in hiding, died in Mauthausen in Austria on May 5, 1945 - very shortly before the camp was liberated, and very shortly before Germany surrendered. Of the 8, the only one who survived was Anne's father, Otto Frank.
They came very, very close to surviving, and it's sad that they didn't. Anne Frank was a very good writer, and I suspect she would have been very well known had she survived. She was born in 1929, so it's quite possible she'd still be alive today. But that is a future that never happened, so we're left with the thoughts of a teen aged girl living in extraordinary conditions during a dangerous and horrific time.
Everyone should read it. More than once.
A little postscript: May 29, 2012
Here is an interesting link I found which talks about the museum as it is currently, and gives some background info on the Franks: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/annefrank/AnneFrank01.html It's pretty lengthy, and has pictures. The museum is quite a bit different than it was when I was there. And it's been so long I've forgotten most details of the place.
Also the group was apparently arrested by members of the SD, not the SS. My mistake.
I'm still surprised at the arbitrariness of some of their fates: Hermann van Pels (van Dann) injured his finger, asked to be put on a barracks detail, and ended up being gassed with the rest of the members of the barracks he was assigned to. Otto Frank survived because he was beaten to within an inch of his life, placed in the infirmary, and when the Auswitz was abandoned, they left the infirmary patients behind. Peter van Pels (Peter van Dann) saw Otto Frank shortly before the evacuation and probably could have hid out in the infirmary, but went along on the "death march" to Mauthausen in January 1945. He survived the march, but died on May 5, 1945 - either very shortly before the camp was liberated or on the actual day of its liberation.
This makes the 3rd time I've read a version of this diary. This one was subtitled "the Definitive Edition", and I actually bought it in the 1990s. I probably haven't read it since 1995 or so.
There are 3 accepted versions of the diary, I think - Anne Frank's original version started in 1942 shortly before she and her family went into hiding (version a), the version she began editing in 1944 with an eye toward publication after the war (version b - she continued with the original diary while creating an edited version), and the version edited by her father (Otto Frank) and published in 1947 or 1948.
The Otto Frank version is the one I read in school in my early teens. He left a lot of stuff out, partly because of space constraints for the publisher, partly because some of the material was not appropriate for a young audience (though Anne was ages 13-15 when she wrote it), and partly because he was her father and she was his daughter. You know how that goes.
Otto Frank died in 1980 and he willed all his daughter's manuscripts to a foundation in Switzerland. Since then they've been studied, verified beyond a doubt, an edition has been published for scholars, and the "definitive" edition has been published for a more general population of readers. There are a lot of things in this book that were not in the version edited by Otto Frank, the version that I read as a student.
Anne and her family considered themselves German, but they were Jewish and when the Nazis came to power they emigrated to Holland, where they had a comfortable life. Her father was a manager in a small company involved in some kind of jam or jelly manufacturing - I'm not quite clear on that. I got the impression that her parents were functional but never quite fluent in Dutch. Anne and Margot, her older sister, were very fluent in Dutch, and I think Margo was fluent in German as well. I think Anne was comfortable speaking German, but treated Dutch as her native language. She was very young when they left Germany.
Their comfortable life lasted until 1940, when the Germans invaded the Netherlands, and began placing restrictions on Jews. She started her diary in the months after the invasion, and very early on she writes about all the restrictions, great and small, placed on the Jews.
This was written from her point of view, and Anne was young and was not aware of everything that was going on. I can assume that her father had made arrangements with some people they worked with to create a hiding place in an annex in his business place (which he was apparently restricted from working in) for his family and another family - 7 people in all. Things were getting bad, and they picked a date to go into hiding, but a wrench was thrown into their plans - Margot, Anne's older sister, received a "call-up" notice from the SS to report to such and such place at a certain time for a work detail in Germany. Of course they were going to send her off to a concentration camp and that would be the last anyone would see of Margot. So the Frank family went into hiding the very next day, a week earlier than originally planned, and they were followed shortly by the van Dann family (their real names were van Pels, but Anne gave them pseudonyms in version b of her diary). Some months later they were joined by a dentist who Anne gave the name Alfred Dussel (real name Fritz Pfeffer), who was also German but had been living in Holland for many years. So there were 8 people living in the "Secret Annex".
I have actually seen this "Secret Annex". I lived in Germany as a teenager (and again in my 20's), and our class took a trip to Amsterdam, and one of the places we visited was the Anne Frank "House". I remember the building was tall and narrow, very close to a canal and shared walls with neighboring buildings. I remember walking up narrow steps to the area where they actually hid - most of the building was offices and a warehouse. Here my memory is hazy - I don't remember many details, except that it was VERY SMALL. There have been a couple of movies based on the diary, and they all give the illusion that there was much more space than there actually was. Still, in a way they had it good - a lot of Jews in hiding were living in much worse conditions, and the ones that answered the call up notices were either murdered, or starved or died of disease in concentration camps.
I think of Anne Frank's diary as almost like two diaries in one. In one, she describes things that happened, and it can be fascinating. In the other she describes feelings - Anne was a young girl going through puberty during some very rough and unusual living conditions, so her feelings can be a pretty wild ride.
I'm sure it was a hard life, and it just got harder as time went on. 8 people forced to live in very close quarters, no way to get away from one another, very limited privacy, food becoming scarcer and scarcer, living in constant fear, it had to be very very stressful. There were personality conflicts, magnified by the close quarters. Anne spends a lot of time writing about the conflicts and stress (seems she was at the center of a lot of it) but I bet she only covered a fraction of what went on. They may have had it good in comparison to some, but they didn't have it easy. They apparently did their best to keep up routines, including school work, but it must have been very difficult.
There is a thing about secrets - the more people who know, the less secure they are. There were 8 people who were hidden in a small space for over 2 years, and they could not do it alone. They had to depend on help from others. The core was 4 people who worked in the office. As time went on, more people knew. One of the office worker's parents was informed and built a bookcase to conceal the entrance to the annex. It became obvious that other people didn't know for sure but suspected, and they were helpful for the most part.
Some things they could not be sure about though, and as I read the diary I realized that the longer things went on the harder it was to keep them secret. The people helping them were forced to deal with "black market" types, and some of those people were less than savory. Over time, they may have developed suspicions, something they could use to protect themselves in case they were arrested (it takes a lot of food & and illegal ration books to feed 8 people, during war time). The annex shared a wall with a business next door, none of whom were informed about their neighbors in hiding. It is hard for 8 people to be absolutely quiet. Something as simple as a cough or sneeze, or an ill timed bump against something might arouse suspicion - especially if repeated over time. They would sometimes open windows to get some fresh air, and on more than one occasion someone noticed some windows opened when no one was supposed to be there and mentioned it to one of the office workers.
And there were a series of 3 or 4 burglaries over a period of months - and in one burglary in particular, maybe two, it's possible that some of this small group of people in hiding were seen. It's even much more likely, in fact it's almost certain, that they were heard. It was their habit, after hours, to make use of the downstairs office space for various things - this was not the most secure thing to do considering their situation, but you can imagine their need to spread out. Also, after working hours, they weren't particularly quiet - they talked, flushed the toilet, lived their lives as normally as they could. It's possible, maybe even probable, that burglars were aware of them before they were aware of the burglars. In the end, this is probably what lead to their capture. I think it's pretty certain that one of the burglars turned them in - probably in return for some leniency. These burglaries were terrifying to Anne, and she describes them in detail.
Anne's diary ends on August 1, 1944. There was nothing special about the entry, nothing different, obviously she had no idea it was going to be her last one. Although she lived in fear of being found, she was also optimistic that they'd survive till the end of the war. They were arrested on August 4th, just a little over two years after they went into hiding. Apparently there was an SS sergeant in full uniform (who's complete name is given in the book), and 3 or 4 Dutch security people in plain clothes (but armed) who arrested the group and searched the annex for money and other valuables. They ignored Anne's diary. Later Miep Gies, one of the people who had hid them for 2 years, found it strewn all over the floor. She considered it private and never read it - she gave it to Anne's father after the war. Two of the people who hid them were arrested, but one released due to ill health, and another managed to escape.
As a group they had some very bad luck, timing wise. They had been there for over two years, if they could have lasted a few more months they probably would have survived the war. As it was they were on the last transport to leave Holland, and initially sent to Auswitz in Poland. Mr. Van Dann (van Pels) was gassed in October or November 1944, apparently among the last to meet that fate. The others were transferred from place to place. Anne's mother died in January 1945, from "hunger and exhaustion". Mrs van Dann was transferred to several camps, and it is certain she did not survive, but no one knows the date or location she died. I can't remember when Mr. Dussel died. Margot and Anne were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and they both died in a Typhoid epidemic that swept through the prison population - Margot in February 1945, and Anne in March 1945. Peter Van Dann who was a couple years older than Anne, and who Anne became very close to during the years in hiding, died in Mauthausen in Austria on May 5, 1945 - very shortly before the camp was liberated, and very shortly before Germany surrendered. Of the 8, the only one who survived was Anne's father, Otto Frank.
They came very, very close to surviving, and it's sad that they didn't. Anne Frank was a very good writer, and I suspect she would have been very well known had she survived. She was born in 1929, so it's quite possible she'd still be alive today. But that is a future that never happened, so we're left with the thoughts of a teen aged girl living in extraordinary conditions during a dangerous and horrific time.
Everyone should read it. More than once.
A little postscript: May 29, 2012
Here is an interesting link I found which talks about the museum as it is currently, and gives some background info on the Franks: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/annefrank/AnneFrank01.html It's pretty lengthy, and has pictures. The museum is quite a bit different than it was when I was there. And it's been so long I've forgotten most details of the place.
Also the group was apparently arrested by members of the SD, not the SS. My mistake.
I'm still surprised at the arbitrariness of some of their fates: Hermann van Pels (van Dann) injured his finger, asked to be put on a barracks detail, and ended up being gassed with the rest of the members of the barracks he was assigned to. Otto Frank survived because he was beaten to within an inch of his life, placed in the infirmary, and when the Auswitz was abandoned, they left the infirmary patients behind. Peter van Pels (Peter van Dann) saw Otto Frank shortly before the evacuation and probably could have hid out in the infirmary, but went along on the "death march" to Mauthausen in January 1945. He survived the march, but died on May 5, 1945 - either very shortly before the camp was liberated or on the actual day of its liberation.
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