Wednesday 1 October 2014

blue light special or lender of last resort

A major American retailer has finally managed to run rings around regulators and public-interest groups and is able to additionally bundle bank-like services for its patrons, many of whom belong to the demographic where they cannot avoid this particular discounter and are not of the means to be courted by other financial institutions.

The infamously miserly business-model of this company already enjoys the reputation of the destroyer of small businesses and Main Street, USA—long before on-line commerce was accused of demolishing brick-and-mortar, patronising suppliers of questionable ilk, and well as—being the employer of a large percentage of the workforce—pays workers so poorly that they could not get by without government assistance, supplemented by tax-payers at the expense of other public-good, and really the tithe and tax on the poor that the government tried to make less painful. The tithe is in the fine-print, as the banking-outreach seems rather harmless and even magnanimous at first, but there are transaction- and maintenance-fees that ensure a steady bleeding with hardly an infusion. The powerful lobbying arm of this corporation has additionally blocked any legislation that might award the same sort of bank-like powers to a lumbering US Postal Service, despite the system's obviously good geographical spread and the fact that post offices did exactly that until its charter was not renewed in the mid 1960s. What do you think? I have to ask, as I do not have the privilege of ever shopping there.

mauerfall or all and all, we're just another brick in the wand

After the metaphorical parting of the Iron Curtain, the very literal Wall was torn down, slabs were distributed to all corners of the world as monuments to this overcoming. It is a scary proposition to think that these pieces, in Berlin and here transplated to Wiesbaden, New York City and beyond could be recalled, cued to re-assemble like some polarising Voltron on some auspicious date.
Provided that nothing's, no sacrifice, forgot, however, I do not worry that there is a great deal to fear in looking forward.

baumbastik

Watching a documentary in search of Germany's most venerable trees—which featured such specimens as this tree in Salz, a community founded by Charlemagne (Karl der GroรŸe) and a suburb of our fair city, Bad Karma, I learned that there is no known tree to have surpassed the millennium mark (those whom might have been in serious contention were felled by Christian missionaries as pagan idolaltry), although at least one noble tree, per the practise of designating separate districts of forest where no one lives, has its own postal code and receives postcards.

This tree pictured is a linden and of advanced age, whose blooms in its boughs are important for the production of honey and was a choice material for wood- carving—the medium employed by Tilman Riemenschneider and other artists. I also learned that the word for beech (Buche, cf., Buch) is derived from the same Proto-Germanic root for book, as before the introduction of parchment and paper, the wood was used for tablets for northern European societies. A sooty pigment called bistre is also obtained by burning the wood and used by ancient people as a form of ink up to modern times with many of the Old Masters for using it for their sketches.

grandfather-clause

Recently in a special mass celebrated in honour of grandparents and the older generation, Pope Francis condemned the emerging culture of assisted-living, old-folks’ homes as a euphemism for a subtler and accepted form of euthanasia. A society that does not care for its past and respect its forbears, the Pontiff said, has no future, and warned of the poisons of institutionalising isolation, loneliness and neglect. The Papal Emeritus joined Pope Francis during the liturgy, as an example of the wisdom that seniors have to impart for the next generation, adding that he is quite happy that this grandfather figure is also residing in the Vatican.