"On Seeing the First Spider of Autumn."

The shadow on the wall that I innocently thought was the shadow of my reading lamp, turned out to be a 50p sized, black, nasty house spider, the first sighting of a big spider this autumn.  I'm afraid I had to despatch it spider heaven, although it wasn't keen to go and escaped down a hole in the skirting board.  The exciting photo right, shows the corner minus the spider, and I suppose he/she will pop out again sometime to frighten the living daylights out of me.  I think I need some  "love Mrs Spider" therapy.  They are so small, but they figure so largely in my life as I hate the damn things, and I will catch it eventually. 

Tonight I went to the singing group, where we relax and move, use our voices as instruments and sing canons and mantras.   As a group we stand around the room, and produce sounds that harmonise with other voices, to produce a free flowing rythmn.  It is interesting to listen to the way our individual sounds formulate into a unity,  and eventually come to a harmonious end.



The creeping plants around the barred window.

We sing in the "Louise Schroeder House", in a small room that has two small barred windows. It has been described as a prison, but I do not see it like that because both windows are surrounded by creeping plants, which look very refreshing.  The  LS House, is a community education centre, rather like our U3As, where people with individual skills and interests can run various groups for the older generation.   This year I have started an English speaking walking group, which meets on a Wednesday afternoon in the Buergerpark.

Louise Schroeder, 1887-1957, was a German politician in the Social Democratic Party.  She was the first female member of the Weimar National Assembly during the Weimar Republic. As an educator and activist she was active in the "Workers Welfare Institution,"  and came under the scrutiny of the Nazi Party during the 1930s and 1940s for her socialist stance. After the division of Germany following WW2, she served a deputy mayor of West Berlin, the only woman to have served in this position.   Her photo shows the face of a warm,  understanding woman, and I think I would have liked her.