By Maria Moss

I first came across White House Ruin in Canyon de Chelly (pro­nounced dəˈʃeɪ or də·shā′) in N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize win­ning nov­el, House Made of Dawn (1968). White House Ruin, he wrote, is the home of Talk­ing God, one of the most promi­nent Nava­jo deities. For years I thought that White House Ruin – much like Talk­ing God – belongs to the realm of Native Amer­i­can cre­ation myths: sig­nif­i­cant for under­stand­ing the work­ings of the oral tra­di­tion, but long devoid of any sig­nif­i­cance and thus incon­se­quen­tial for every­day life. Yet all of this changed when I first vis­it­ed Canyon de Chelly in Jan­u­ary 1994. Not only was White House Ruin one of the main attrac­tions of the stun­ning, inter­twined net­work of canyons at Canyon de Chelly, but the sun in the sky and the snow on the ground cre­at­ed an atmos­phere that felt almost mystical.

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As you may have heard, the results from this year’s mid-term elec­tions are quite clear: con­trol of both the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be in Repub­li­can hands for the com­ing term. The impli­ca­tions of the elec­tion for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, how­ev­er, might not be so obvi­ous. William Chan­dler, Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, deci­phers the results for us.

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Amer­i­cans have nev­er paid for gro­cery bags – paper or plas­tic. Mar­kets would even dou­ble-bag on request. No charge. Hence, we were slow to observe that killing trees for unnec­es­sary paper or mak­ing plas­tic just to pol­lute oceans or fill land­fills was a bad idea. The first time I took a can­vas bag to the gro­cery store, the bag­ger proud­ly informed me that she had care­ful­ly wrapped each item in plas­tic “to pro­tect your nice bag.” So much for the environment.

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By Daria Radler

It’s the time of the year for the undead to become alive again and for the liv­ing to be giv­en the creeps. It’s a time of the year that chil­dren have been look­ing for­ward to for months and that even adults get excit­ed about. The end of Octo­ber marks the time of Hal­loween: spooky cos­tumes, scary pump­kins, and pos­si­bly sev­er­al bags filled with sweets and candy.

Even though the tra­di­tion of Hal­loween is a fair­ly recent phe­nom­e­non in Ger­many, you’ll find frights and thrills aplen­ty. So in case you don’t have any­thing planned yet, here are some ideas for you:

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