[Vision2020] Out of curiosity . . .

[Nicholas Gier]

Hi Tom,

Please forgive for not replying about my preferred footwear.  I've had a
few pairs of Nikes, but I've worn many other brands.  My first running
shoes were Adidas, and they were just track shoes.  That was 1966 and I was
on a Rotary Fellowship in Denmark at the time.  The Danes thought it was
very strange, because none of them wore athletics shoes.

Every day, as a part of my daily work I ran around the national stadium,
and I was the only runner the entire year.  One dark winter afternoon some
Danish brats ambushed me and called me names.  I returned the curses with a
lame response.  All l could come with was "I smaa sviner" (you little
swine!)  But it worked.  They scattered and hid in the bushes.  I could
hear them say "Han maa vaer svenkser" (he must be a Swede), which for them
and many Danes is the worst type of alien.

My Danish student friends thought is was also odd that I came all that way
to study their famous philosopher Kierkegaard.  At that time the Danes had
pretty much ignored him as an eccentric, who criticized their bourgeois
life-style and their church.  The only professor who lectured on him at the
University of Copenhagen was a Hungarian refugee by the name of Gregor
Malanchuk, who spoke Danish with a heavy accent and in Kierkegaard's 19th
Century Danish.  I couldn't understand him, and Danes in the class made fun
of him unmercifully.

When I went back to Denmark on my 1985-86 sabbatical, the Soren Kierkegaard
Institute was well established, but still most of the professors were still
foreigners.  The Danes have now reluctantly acknowledged their great
thinker.

Sorry, Tom, for the long digressive answer.

Nick


On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

> Does Nick Gier wear Nike gear?
>
> Has John Deere ever received a "Dear John"?
>
> And an inquiry concerning Little Richard . . . but not now.
>
> Suffice it to say that inquiring minds want to know.
>
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "There's room at the top they are telling you still.
> But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
> If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
>
> - John Lennon
>
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-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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