Mah Pollard, Mah Coppice

I am sorry for not posting yesterday. I have plenty of various pictures, but I still have a huge backlog of work around the garden as well due to the six weeks that I have spent lounging in my bed drinking tea and whatnot. And I think it will take a few more weeks to get back on track.

These last few days I had to clean up some rubble from house renovations. I used it to repair the gravel-covered area behind my house, waste disposal trucks made some grooves there that needed filling. And as for yesterday, the weather was splendid and these are the fruits of my labor.

Firewood © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Also, I am totally knackered today, but it is hard to take a picture of that.

I was shredding and cutting wood from coppiced and pollarded trees in my garden. I have planted these trees years ago specifically for this purpose. The pollarded trees are willows, some local variety of Salix fragilis that unfortunately does not grow as fast as I would wish to. But I also got a few willows of another species from lowlands in Pilsen, which looks a lot more promising.

Pollarded willow © Charly.

Pollarded willow © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

For the coppice, I bought poplar hybrid Populus nigra x Populus maximowiczii Max 4. It grows well, but it would be better if I had the resources to plow the area first. As it is, it takes for the trees two-three years to really take root and unfortunately, during that time a lot of them die to water voles. Water voles are a huge problem, despite the fact that I do not live anywhere near water. One year they got into my bonsai trees and totally massacred them, destroying even some very valuable ones. And they make setting up of the coppice a real pain in the nether regions.

Coppice © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

That is why as of now I only have only one row of really established trees and one row of two-year-old trees that should hopefully take off this year. The rest of the coppice was planted last year, but this spring we had to renew about 30% of it and unfortunately due to my illness it was not done on time and properly, so it is questionable whether it will work or not.

The wood of this particular poplar tree is not as good firewood as hardwood would be, it is very light, almost like balsa. But what it lacks in density, it really more than makes up in volume. Even so, I am also planting oaks, hazels, and maples in the coppice, they sprout all around the garden anyway and this way I get some use out of them in the future. And this year I bought 200 hornbeam seedlings and planted them around the area near the hedge. That is the south edge, thus the slower-growing hornbeam won’t be overshadowed by the super-fast-growing poplars and willows. Unfortunately, it too is a very tasty water vole snack – one of the bonsai trees that fell victim to their raid was hornbeam and nothing was left of the tree back then except a tiny pencil-like stub and a few splinters. But I already planted hornbeam for hedge a few years ago and it thrives well in this area so I hope the trees in the coppice will grow faster than the voles manage to eat them.

I have several hundred square meters of my garden for the coppice, which means that in a few years I could grow a significant portion of my firewood (I estimate it at about 30%, or 100% every 3 years) on my property. That is one little project that I could do on my own to go from burning fossil fuels to renewables.

Close Encounters of the tiny kind

During lunch break walk at work, I have encountered this little fellow. He flew by and sat on the macadam right next to me – a very conspicuous bright green jewel on the grey dull road. It was really tiny – about the size of a thumbnail. And of course I did not have my camera and macro lenses on me, so you have to do with this rather poor pictures made with my phone.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

A Brief Update on the HDD Magnets

I have been mostly working on a shelf this weekend. It is very needed because there is more than enough stuff just cluttering up the house and it is getting on my nerves.

But I also had worked on my little project involving the magnets that I have salvaged from defunct HDD a few months ago.

First I took a piece of 3 mm thick, 20 mm wide galvanized mild steel and I cut off a piece big enough so I could bend it into a U-shape in such a way that the magnets can sit inside with about 2 mm free space between the magnets and the bends. then I also cut two just 3 mm bits of the same stock. When put together as seen on the picture, you get a very strong magnet that only pulls in one direction (up). Plus the way the HDD magnets are magnetized means that this magnet now has four poles N-S-N-S. Also that the magnetic field is very strong, but has a very short reach. I tried to measure the force with which it holds a piece of steel and it was about 65 Newton, which is impressive for such a small thing cobbled together from scraps.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

After this, I cut a few pieces of brass to fill the spaces as tightly as possible, and I drilled and cut an M5 thread in one arm of the U. Precision is essential here. Unfortunately, we do not get along very well and she is a mere nodding acquaintance, despite my best efforts, so everything was a bit wonky.

I have no pictures of that work because I still did not figure out exactly how my new phone works – I thought I took pictures, but apparently not.

When I had everything cut, I mixed a generous amount of quick drying epoxy and slathered it all around and glued everything together.  And after the epoxy hardened enough I have ground off (manually) excessive material and I trued and polished slightly the magnetic surface.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

So now I have this strong, one-directional magnet 50x20x10 mm. So far everything goes as planned, and I hope that the next step in this project will go similarly well.

Slavic Saturday

Today just something lighter, and a reaction to our recent visit from the Grammar and Spelling Police. I would like to touch up on spelling in slavic languages. I have already mentioned the overabundance of cases and genders, so now let’s go on to the spelling.

The one problem that slavic languages have with latin alphabet is that it just does not contain enough letters to cover all the consonants in the language, a problem that multiple people tried to solve in history.

First cases involved inventing a whole new script – the Glagolitic script by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, who invented the alphabet specifically so they can better preach Christianity to Slavs. It did not hold, at least not in whole – a part of this script was later used together with Greek alphabet in the creation of Cyrillic script, still in use by many Slavic nations, mainly the biggest one – Russians.

But some slavic nations have adopted latin alphabet for their writing in middle ages and during their history multiple attempts were made to solve the conundrum of not enough letters. Like using digraphs. This type of orthography is still used a lot for example in Polish, whilst modern Czech has only one digraph, ch. Because in fifteenth century came along Jan Hus and in addition to sparking religious war he also invented diacritics (allegedly, there is some dispute). By adding two simple symbols – ˇ and ´ – he solved the problem once and for all, at least for Czechs.

Since then, spelling in Czech is fairly primitive, as well as in many other Slavic languages, whether with their version of modified Latin script (sometimes made after the Czech model) or Cyrillic. Something like a “Spelling bee” is impossible in any meaningful way, because every word is spelled “as it sounds”. Literally. In Czech, children can learn to read by saying the short names of each letter in a word in succession. When done quickly enough, the word naturally emerges. Learning to write spoken word after that is fairly intuitive.

There are complications, of course. Loan words can be one, although usually Czech language either just takes a word and transliterates it into the closest approximation to its original sound achievable (manager = manažer) or does not bother with that at all and the word is just pronounced in the czech fashion, its original sound be damned (buffet =bufet – in modern Czech the “t” is not silent and the “u” is pronounced differently from the French original). Second complication, and a source of major headache to even Czechs, is that I and Y are the same sound in certain situations. So whilst nobody makes a mistake reading a word, it is fairly common to make mistakes when writing.

And punctuation is probably a mess in every language. Well, I never intended to be proof reader…

I Never Thought I am Going to be Happy About Loosing my job. Again.

You might have noticed that over the last two years I was getting more and more dissatisfied with my job. Or, more precisely, with my employer.

Twelve years ago I landed a job at a USA corporation owned factory that had all the right components – interesting job where I could learn new things all the time, both manually and intellectually challenging so I could show off my wide skill set, and well paid, extremely so for my humble standards. After a few years however the shine got a bit worn off, as I was constantly struggling with the mindset that was prevalent on key management positions and I was always outspoken about my disagreements with anyone, no matter how higher in  the hierarchy they were above me. Despite this (or maybe because of it?), I got enough respect and clout at all levels in the company that when it came to a serious clash between me and a complete nincompoop of a mid-ranking manager, where unkind words were said on record, the manager was sacked and not me.

All this instilled in me a deep loathing of managers and especialy those who have MBA. To me, MBA managers are the embodiment of Dunning-Krueger effect – they have no discernible skills, but they think they can dictate actual experienced experts how they should do their job. Not every manager is like this of course, but enough of them that it is noticeable.

Then the whole company was acquired by another international giant, this time a german one. For a short while it looked like things will get better, that the flaws/positives ratio will shift a bit for the better regarding how workers are treated. It did not last – our division was chipped off of the big block and sold off again. And unfortunately again to a USA owned company.

From the start I was fearing that things will go back to the bad old ways, and they did. More than that, it quickly became apparent that things will get a lot worse before they get better – if they get better. And these suspicions were proven true when previous years – in direct contradiction to what we were told after the acquisition I might add – a massive round of layoffs has started. First people were “merely” encouraged to go and they got adequate or even generous severance packages if they decided to do so. Then started the push to slash personnel even more, and people got terminated. Still with severance packages, because this is EU and not USAistan, but loss of job is still a loss of job, even when you get handed several month’s worth money.

When I started, I was first part of and then the head of a three-person team. The clash with the idiotic manager was because the team was taken from me and I was forced to do all the work alone, which was only possible in an Excel sheet, not in an actual real world. I got one team member reinstated and some duties were given to another team. It was still not ideal, but it was workable and under the then german owner it seemed like it might improve again in the future. However this last round of layoffs took also my last subordinate for good and it meant that I would, again, have to do everything by myself.

I am not willing to risk a full blown burn-out.

So I decided to quit. Had I been a mediocre or worse worker, I would have gotten a decent severance package and I could leave the company straight away. But being good has some drawbacks. The company did not want me to quit, and I was told I won’t get anything if I do so. I had some quite intense (but polite and respectful) exchanges with both my supervisor and my HR manager and an agreement was made, due to be signed on Monday. I cannot  of course disclose the details (and if you by some coincidence know or think you know any of the obscured details, do not disclose them in the comments, it would get you banned and the comment deleted), but I can say that I will stay at the company until November and do my best to impart some key components of my extensive experience on my successors. In exchange for that I won’t be completely stiffed. I would prefer to go straightaway, but this is the financially more savvy option.

I could only go into the negotiations as I did because I predicted the situation and I was already preparing for this option for the last year, saving money so I feel more secure and can actually afford to say “I quit anyway” and mean it. I still get less than I would if the company fired me (partially because I still underestimated the strength of my hand, but for that I only have myself to blame), but a lot more than I would if I had one-sidedly quit. I do not recommend to anyone to try what I have done, however, I have also seen people to overplay their hand in these things.

My next plan – and it will affect the blog, hopefully in a good way – is to not seek another job. I feel pretty confident that I would find one, but I am so mentally tired from corporate culture that I need a looong rest to get my bearings back. So the plan is to make knives for a year and see where that goes. I will wake up just as if I were to go to a job, work 8-10 hours daily at knives, and when I build a bit of stock I will try if people will buy them. If it works, great. If it does not, the worst that can happen is that after a year (or perhaps a bit more, depending on how quickly the money dries up) of doing something I like doing I will be forced to sell the knives for just the price of the raw materials and seek employment again.

This is not the first time I am doing this. Straight after university I was working in USA for a short while and with the exchange rate at that time I could subsequently afford to be one year unemployed and live off of the savings. I used that time and money for purchasing a good PC and learning myself the skills needed to build and maintain one, as well as the skill set needed for work with Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Photoshop etc. all that new fangled stuff that I did not learn at school but thought – correctly – will be important in the future.  This has helped me to land my first job, in which I have spent five years and I left it for similar reasons (and under similar conditions, funnily enough) as the current one. I felt quite happy leaving that job, despite not having a new one yet. And I feel similarly happy now as I did then. I hope it works out well for me again.

 

Bonsaist’s Nightmare

My trees, or more precisely what is left of them after the disastrous spring of 2018, have started to grow rather merrily this year a few weeks ago. This picture was taken on April 28. and normally this sight would be a source of delight for me after a drab and colourless winter. This year it was a nightmare to behold.

As you can see, the trees are piled up under the benches and not on them – that is because this is how they were stacked for the winter, out of the wind, huddled up and askew, so water does not freeze in the pots in such a way that would break them apart. I had trouble to replant my trees for a few years by now, because I just could not get vacation time off at work, but that would not have been a problem this year. This year I was sick for six weeks non stop, and nature does not kindly wait until one heals. That meant that works did not continue at snail’s pace and on weekends only, as it was in the last years – they stopped completely.

However replanting bonsai trees, finished or even half-finished like most of these is a must. The roots fill up the whole container during vegetation season and eat up all the nutrients. The substrate gets compacted and does not take water particularly well anymore. There are species that can do without replanting for a year or two, but not more, and there are also species that simply must be replanted every year, no exceptions. The roots must be cut back and for some trees the time window at which this can be done can be very narrow and if the roots overgrow for too much and too long, they cannot be cut at all without significant risk to the tree’s health and life. When the tree starts to grow, it generally means that safe time to cut the roots is rapidly nearing its end – and in the picture above, all trees have started to grow.

Luckily the weather cooled down a bit again when I finally got time and was fit enough to work, so the trees slowed down their frantic spring growth again. Nevertheless I had to hurry up, a lot.

First thing that I have done to save time was to buy pre-made substrate this year and plant all trees in it. It is more expensive, and the pre-made substrate has some downsides (but to be fair some upsides too), but I just could not manage to mix my own substrate this year and still replant all the trees.

Second thing that I have done was to completely reorganize the glass house where my pomegranates grow – see the picture to the right. Those had to be replanted too. They are not in pots yet, but the roots must be cut as well, otherwise they would grow too long, thick and deep and the plant could not be put safely into the pot when the time comes. But pomegranates were grown very significantly already, and the only way to increase their chances to survive was to cut about 3/4 of their crowns (coincidentally, in the background you can see one of my three fig trees – it has sprouted nice sticks and I had to cut it back for place reasons – you might remember last year I feared it died due to late frost).

When the glass house was reorganized, I could take the trees that are in pots now in there and work on re-potting and neither rain nor snow could stop me. But, I hate to say it, I had to cut corners and I have done a rather sloppy job with many trees. Just like with the pomegranates, I had to cut crowns a bit more than I would normally do, so aesthetics went out of the window for the moment, important was to secure survival.

The same treatments have got all the trees that are not in pots but freely in a flowerbed, which is done either to rejuvenate damaged trees, or to allow for quicker and stronger growth in general for trees that are at the beginning of their journey to becoming a bonsai, like having their roots slowly reduced etc.

When I finally finished, I got a bit of luck this year – the weather got cold, but not freezing cold, for the next two weeks. We had even a bit of late snow.

That is not something that would make me happy, normally, but it did this time. It meant the trees grew slower, they needed less water and the constant drizzle and rain meant that unlike last year, they were not in danger of getting over-dried and overheated at just the wrong moment. So far, so good, by last inspection yesterday evening there were no signs of impeding disaster. I hope that when the weather gets warmer again (according to forecast this weekend), that they all resume their growth  without problems. Lets hope.

Would some of you be interested in short series “Bonsai for Beginners”? I have been thinking about writing up something for people who might want to have a few bonsai trees or perhaps just one without making it a big-scale hobby – like what species to choose from and how to care for them, some generic advice etc. Let me know in the comments.

Blacklist Acting Funny…

Just a quick admin note – I just noticed that our blacklist sends occasionally comments in limbo despite them not containing any of the blacklisted phrases and not being submitted by banned users. I will have to clean up the blacklisted list, there are some generic things in it that were added by Caine back in the past probably to deal with some temporary acute issue.

I have no idea what causes this, it does not happen very often. If your comment does not appear after you post it and you were not banned by either Caine or me, it might just be a hiccup. In that case wait or write a short follow-up comment telling me about this. From now on, I will check the trash more often.

Slavic Saturday

After Slavs established themselves in Bohemia and Moravia, they prospered. Eventually their rulers became Dukes, Kings and some later on even Roman emperors. Czechs were important players on the European political landscape of that time, having significant military power and strategic position at the center of the continent, where they could trade with many neighbours with ease whilst also being shielded from attacks by mountains, especially in the west.

I have already mentioned those mountains in comments before. Their history is fascinating and it is an example of how far-reaching and unpredictable the outcome of a reasonable political decision with initially good results can be.

Czechs have primarily settled along riverbeds and in lowlands, they did not feel at all comfortable settling in forests and mountains. This was a serious drawback to ambitious rulers of Přemyslid dynasty, who recognized the importance of settling in said mountains and get their natural resources – the wood on the surface and metal ores underneath – to use. They wanted to expand their influence, and for that they needed money – but for whatever reasons, Czechs were either unwilling or unable or both to oblige and get to work felling trees and mine ores on big scale. Or maybe there was not enough of them to do that.

Thus Přemysl II. Otakar and his successor Václav II. have invited German settlers to help (do not ask me about the details and legalities, I do not know them). And the plan succeeded – German settlers have successfully managed to settle on the unoccupied land. They subdued the inhospitable mountains and tapped into the riches underneath them. The economy thrived for the centuries to follow and one of the reminders of this success is the word “dollar” which is derived from the name of silver coinage mined in Jáchymov in 1520 by these German settlers in Bohemia.

Initially there was relatively little friction between the Germans and Czechs under the rule of Czech kings. The Germans and Czechs had no real conflicts of interests and both nationalities happily intermingled at the borders. But this has begun to change at the time of Hussite Revolution. Whilst Czechs got overwhelmingly critical of Catholic church, Germans remained overwhelmingly loyal. This has increased the friction and it never got better after that – if anything, the Thirty Years War has made matters worse. Forced catolicisation and germanization have followed and it is probably in these times when the sentiment of Germans being Czech’s sworn enemies has started.

It is no wonder that when Czechs got the upper hand after WWI, after several hundreds of years of being persecuted by Germans, they responded by cutting down some of the privileges the Germans used to have. To which the Germans did not respond kindly, because like in all privileged classes every individual thinks that they themselves are not privileged, they deserve it all. So of course this has bred even more resentment and when you throw Great Depression into the mix, which has indeed hit ethnic Germans harder than Czechs, you get Nazis. Hitler has played heavily the “Germans are persecuted in Czechoslovakia” card in order to gain access to Czech factories to make weapons and to use Czechs as cheap slave labor – and eventually he succeeded. His main lackey in achieving this goal was Konrád Henlein, who despite being of mixed ancestry himself has become as rabid Nazi supremacist as they go.

WWII sealed the hate between Czechs and Germans for good. Ethnic Germans in Bohemia overwhelmingly embraced Nazism and as a result, after the WWII they were expelled from the land. An argument can be made – and is being made – that this was unjust, but whilst the expulsion has led to many personal injustices and very nasty results and atrocities, in some cases even mass murders, I fear that without the expulsion there would be even more atrocities – mass murders and pogroms – because right after the war the resentment was too deep and the memory of Nazi atrocities too fresh. To illustrate the sentiment at the time, I want to relate this story from another person with mixed ancestry like me, whose German grandfather allegedly commented after the war: “Czechs are behaving like beasts!” to which his Czech wife allegedly responded “And? They learned that from you!”.

As a result, today Germans are again just a tiny minority in Bohemia. And Czechs still largely dislike and distrust Germans.

To me this long chain of events shows how a decision in 13 century has shaped politics in 20. century. Would Přemysl II. Otakar invite the Germans had he known what will come of it? Hard to say. But it makes me wonder what the repercussions of today’s political games will be a few hundred years from now.

Disemboweling a Phone. And Emboweling it again.

For about two weeks I won’t post too much, since being healthy again means I am playing catch-up with my garden. More on that later, perhaps. Lets just say for now that after six weeks spent mostly in bed, two hours of manual work feel like ten and the results are underwhelming.  So this week is it work and next week I am on holiday in a hotel which has, from experience, crappy internet connection.

So today instead of a Slavic Saturday, which always takes a lot of time to write, just a short anecdote.

Whan I was sick, I dropped my phone on concrete floor. It hit it with one edge and a plastic corner component chipped off. I wanted to glue it back as soon as I get well – but I dropped the phone again and it fell on that very same edge second time. And due to the lacking plastic part to soften the blow, the display cracked. Phone dead, Charly sad.

I bought a new phone immediately, but I loathe throwing things just away so I looked into if the old one can be repaired – either to keep it asa  spare, or to use it as camera in workshop so as not to damage my actual camera with dust and humidity. I requested an offer from company specializing in repairing smartphones, but their answer was “sorry, we do not support this type”. Not wanting to waste too much time asking around,  I googled just a bit more and coincidentally and I found that for  60,-€ I can buy a new display and special glue. I also found some videos about how to replace the display. So I decided to try my hand at repairing it myself. 60,-€ is not exactly little money – for perspective, it is about 6-8% of median net income in CZ – but it is little enough for me to be willing to risk it.

Removed back – the bowels of the machine are exposed.

First thing was to remove the glued-up back cover, which was achieved with the use of brute force and an old screwdriver. I have managed it without damaging any of the innards. Which is lucky, because I have done this actually before I decided to try to repair the phone, at a time when I was resigned to toss it – I just wanted to look inside for curiosity’s sake and thus I was not very careful.

Removed battery and untangled cables.

Second step was to carefully unclip the battery connector (which is surprisingly tiny) and carefully remove the battery. This proved difficult, because it was held in place with double-sided adhesive tape. I have scratched the black paint over the printed circuit behind it a bit, but luckily not too much and without damaging the conductors. After the battery was removed, I had to carefully untangle the intricately folded cables at the bottom near the charing connector, where the display cable connector is clipped onto them. Very, very intricate work, and there were some very tiny screws that did not want to budge – especially since I do not in fact own the right screw driver for those. But I managed it in the end.

Cracked display removed.

After losing about half an hour searching for our hair dryer, which nobody in the family uses much, I managed to find it and I have used it to heat up the edges of the display to soften the glue a bit. More brute force was used to pry it off, damaging it even more in the process. Once it was removed, I have taken one of my sharp tiny flat screw drivers and I cleaned away thoroughly any residual glue on the phone itself.

Glueing up the new display.

I inserted the new display in, connected it and the battery and tried whether it works or not. It did, so I unplugged it again and applied glue on all the places where it previously was applied. The glue had to harden for three hours under slight pressure, so I have put some plastic clamps on it and went bout other business. After three hours, I folded back all the intricate cables, clipped back all the clips, screwed all the screws, connected the battery and glued back the cover. And left it again for a few hours with clamps.

Its alive! Now kill it with fire…. Or not.

And success! It works. There are some funny coloured spots on the display, whether because it is a cheap non original spare or because I applied too much pressure during the repair I do not know, but apart from that it seems to work perfectly well and all funcionalities are there – the camera is cameraing, the speaker is speaking, the telephone is telephoning and the display is displaying.

I actually really felt like I did something worth doing.

YouTube Video: Did people have bad teeth in medieval times?

Through the magic of recommendations, I have discovered another interesting youtube channel about medievalism. I have watched this one video so far though, because reasons. But I intend to watch more when the opportunity arises.

I have often wondered how dental hygiene was done in medieval times. It is not a topic that is routinely taught at schools, not even good ones.

Slavic Saturday

Lets talk about easter and easter eggs and associated traditions.

Most readers of this blog grew up with germanic traditions regarding this holiday. Which are completely different from what I grew up with, so when I first heard about easter bunny, I had to look up what it is. Not that easter bunnies from chocolate were unknown to us, but they did not have any special meaning and for long I assumed that they are bunny-shaped just for the cutesies. About the only thing that is common between germanic and slavic easter traditions are the painted eggs, but they are used differently.

The symbols of easter here are willow twigs, coloured eggs and a lamb. Willow twigs decorated with ribbons and painted eggshells are used for decorations and lamb is usually baked from dough, or recetnly made from chocolate etc. The willow twigs and coloured eggs are carryover from pagan times, symbolizing rebirth of the year, although christians staunchly deny this and insist on easter being purely christian holiday etc. etc. It is not. It was appropriated by christians by blending christian and pagan traditions together, just as Christmas, as a way to make converting pagans easier. There is nothing in the bible about coloured eggs and willow twigs.

The lamb however is probably later addition and it does symbolize christ and other stupidities from the bible in all their goryness. Only the cutting of its throat and smearing of the blood over door hinges or tresholds before baking it was replaced by making it from dough. Much less gory and cheaper to do, especially in big populations that diverged from raising sheep to cattle centuries ago.

So far, so good. Nothing particularly egregious about these traditions. But there is more to it, and as much as I loathe christian superstitions and traditions for their immense stupidity, one of the carry-overs from pagan times I hate even more.

Those willow twigs and coloured eggs do not serve only as a decoration. On Monday, hardboiled eggs are given by women and girls as gifts to men and boys who are supposed to go from house to house  (so-called koleda) and sing traditional songs and recite poems in exchange for the eggs. And they beat the women.

Yup. You read that correctly. In CZ and SL the men go from house to house with clubs (called pomlázka) woven from usually 8 to 9 long slender and supple willow twigs, decorated with ribbons, and they are supposed to beat the women with them, depending on region either shoulders, legs, ankles or simply their derrière. Some take it symbolically only, some take it literally and bruises can be raised, although it is expected to stop short of actually causing an injury. The beating of women with young willow twigs should magically transfer the youthfulness and freshness from the twigs to the women, or some such incredibly stupid shit. Thus the name of the club – po (prefix that can mean “to make”) mlázka (derived from “mladý” = young). Today nobody believes the magic, it is just “fun” and “tradition”. In this case, “tradition” really just means “an incredibly stupid thing that has been done for a very long time”.

In some regions today women are not completely defenseless – they can douse the men with cold water in return. But this is later appropriation in these regions, because originally it is the men who douse the women, in some regions instead of, in some regions in addition to, the beating, and there are regions where it is practiced as such still.

As a child I loved easter for the painted eggs. I loved the creative work involved with it and it was something to look forward to. But I loathed pomlázka from early on, de facto from as far back as I can remember. I did not like going about begging and beating people. I did not see how it is supposed to be good to spend a few joyful days with my sister and my mother painting eggs, and on monday beat them with a club whilst reciting some verses that have lost their meaning. Well, strictly speaking as a boy I was supposed to skip the painting and do only the begging and beating. Fuck that. Beating anyone with anything is just wrong, even symbolically, and creativity does not have gender.

I see no reason in preserving the tradition, it has no cultural value anymore and it produces nothing of value. Well, the women produce the beautifuly painted eggs, but the men are not expected to do anything worthwhile whatsoever. And in some regions even the eggs are already being skipped and exchanged for shots of booze, so the men instead of coming home with a basket of painted eggs come home drunk as a skunk. I would love for this tradition to die already. I will miss the eggs, but I think they are not worth preserving if the ritual beating is to remain too.

It won’t happen any time soon. What I find the saddest thing about this is that in loathing this despicable tradition I am the exception, not the rule. In fact, AFAIK I do not know a single other person sharing my view.

Edit: Due to my illness I have slightly lost track of time and I thougth it is saturday already. I have decided to leave it as it is.