Short Stories

Saturday the 29 July 2023. Young people are our societyꞌs most valuable resource. Is that true? If young people choose to glue themselves to the tarmac it is always for a deeper reason. It is something we adults have to face and not belittle their actions as just a pubescent or even terrorist act of violence. Reason is always connected to stages in development. Reason has to mature. Sometimes young people in groups will do things they would never do on their own. And sometimes these things are simply necessary. Cognitive control only develops in puberty. For us as adults …

Saturday the 22nd of July 2023. My lemon tree is trying to tell me something: „look at me, I’m thirsty, my roots are no longer finding any water.“ My fig tree is showing a similar reaction. Its leaves are taking on an ever lighter colour before falling to the ground: for lack of water. Everything is drying up. The large umbrella pine is laying on a kind of red carpet. Yet it’s not showing the way to the Cannes film festival. Temperatures are rising and rising, and it’s throwing half of its needles at my feet. Too much weight, too …

Saturday the 15th of July 2023. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the use of fossil fuels has released enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is a gas that reduces heat reflection from the Earth, leading to the rise in temperatures on our planet. Every year sees the addition of several billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Today we know that these will remain for centuries in the earth’s atmosphere. The speed of the earth heating up has long been underestimated. Its consequences are dramatic: ice melting, rising sea levels, devastating forest fires and ever worse …

Saturday the 8th of July 2023. None of the following is a joke. You wanted to read a story by me? You will get this story. Right here, right now. Imagine you had an accident in your youth. Maybe a sporting accident, playing basketball, say – or a motorbike crash on a rural road – or an accident at work on one of the many constructions sites of the Algarve… or anywhere else between Beja and Faro. So you are taken to hospital, to be operated on the spine. An operation that is not straightforward, taking up many hours. When …

Saturday 1st July 2023. This story begins with the loss of woodlands. The error that is committed (not only) in Monchique is probably that the forest, ie nature, is always only viewed as a commercial space. This means that any investment in forests has to yield a profit, for otherwise this investment is not worth our while. Now this refers not only to financial interests but also to labour, the physical investment, involving hours, days and weeks. So is the forest nothing but a commercial surface, something like a sausage factory? Doesn‘t the forest also hold something fundamentally honourable: conservation, …

Saturday 1st April 2023. Can this be true? Queue-jumping for climate neutrality? Now Berlin always used to want to be a pioneer in all things climate neutrality. So why initiate a referendum? Why not simply hatch a plan, send that plan to the EU and apply for a grant? While the Berlin referendum did pass, by the thinnest of majorities, in the end not enough supporters had hit the polling stations. Posters with “Berlin 2030 climate neutral” and “Yes!” written above had been adorning lampposts all over town. Still, once the votes were counted in nearly all voting locations more …

Saturday 18th March 2023. Laura Rodrigues is mayor of Torres Vedras, a town with just under 80,000 inhabitants in the western part of central Portugal, and belonging to the Estremadura region. Torres Vedras is located just under 60 km north of Lisbon. Together with her vereadores (councillors), Laura Rodrigues is planning to shape their town by 2050 in such a way that it will be fit to function in a climate-neutral way. So what is their plan? An important step in order to reach this goal has been the drawing up of the action plan on sustainable energy and climate …

Saturday the 4th of March 2023. The other day I received a strange phone call relating to the theatre review we published last week. „This is not what we agreed!“ – the caller shouted into the phone and into my ear. First off I increased the distance of the phone to my ear and replied that nothing had been agreed as to the review, as I don’t enter into any agreements when I write something. Freedom of thought reigns supreme, both for the theatre as for the press. Or am I wrong? 25 April forever! If you ask me, I …

Saturday, 18th february 2023. Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble. This is the gamut of the top companies polluting our world with plastic. Do you know what actually happens to the plastics that you and I dutifully drop off at the Ecoponto to be recycled? Well, do you? At the moment, the play „Alice in the Wonderland of Waste“ (Alice no País do Lixo), staged by the AORCA troupe in Lagos looks at the issue of waste recycling using drama and dance. Last Tuesday I atched the dress rehearsal, for there can be no review without seeing the actual play performed. Which is why I …

Saturday the 11th of February 2023. These days, if you are thinking about building a house or restoring an old ruin you really will be forced to conduct a thorough study of your building materials and prices. Over the course of the past year alone, the price of construction materials such as steel, glass, cement and bricks increased by 30 to 40, some even up to 50 per cent. Add to this substantially higher interest rates applied to bank loans and more demanding efficiency specifications for new buildings, as well as the possibility of falling real estate prices. And this …