The NYTimes confirms what we already knew, but boy, it's painful in black and white:

Silicon Valley lost 127,000 jobs, or about 9 percent of its employment, from the first quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002, according to a report to be published Monday by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit group formed to promote the area.

Job losses in the period equaled more than half the total job gains for the valley from 1998 to 2000. Losses were particularly acute among those industries the survey defined as "driving" clusters — software, semiconductors and computer and communications hardware — which lost 22 percent of their jobs from the second quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002...

..."The bottom line is, clearly we've been through a boom-bust cycle, and you can see that in all the trend data," said Doug Henton, president of Collaborative Economics, a research company in Mountain View, Calif., which conducted the study. "There has been one number driving the Valley, and that was business investment in information technology, and until businesses start buying I. T. again, you won't see that turn around."

 Just back from 2.5 days in Frankfurt, staying with my good friends Jens and Sonja, who told me that they're getting married, which made it an especially excellent trip! That and eating enormous haxen and downing a pitcher of the Frankfurt specialty, apfelwein, at a traditional German restaurant near their place in Frankfurt (no, of course the wedding news was more important...). Haxen are pork hocks -- and they are absolutely huge. Like, three people could happily dine on one, but there it is in front of you, steaming and nearly filling the plate on its porky own, and whether you like it or not, it's going to be just you and a big knife and the haxen (see picture!). Curiously, there are probably more vegetarians in Germany than anywhere I've been, maybe because of the mere thought of haxen -- and because the Germans are also among the biggest meat-eaters I've ever been amongst. The German word for meat, fleisch, certainly cuts to the chase -- no namby-pamby metaphorical waffle for the Saxons! At any rate, I don't eat all much meat, but I do like having haxen with Jens and Sonja. And if the opportunity to have spaetzle arises, as it did at another dinner, I am a particularly happy girl. And let's not even start on the beer...

We also went to the top of the second highest skyscraper in Frankfurt for a drink and to visit the viewing platform. It was below freezing up there, but what a view! The security is very stringent now to go up to the top, involving a metal detector and having handbags checked. Also Frankfurt airport now has some quite tough security, and all bags are x-rayed before you check in.

Today was spent on a leisurely drive through a bit of the Rheingau, the very picturesque wine-producing region where the vineyards cling to impossibly steep hills that sweep upward from the (currently very swollen) Rhine. We visited Kloster Ebenbach, a former 12-century Cistercian monastery where In the Name of the Rose was filmed. The Cistercian monks apparently renounced meat (so, no haxen for the tonsured fellas) and heated rooms. I can guarantee that this must truly have brought them in touch with their human frailties in the winter as it was absolutely freezing in the unheated, vaulted dormitory where they slept, and ice and some vestiges of the last snowfall lay on the ground outside. I bought two bottles of the wine still produced at the Kloster for some contemporary warming of the soul at some later point (the monks were big on making wine in massive wooden presses and barrels way back when). Prost!