es war einmal oder forms of transmission

H and I decided to revisit the town of Lohr am Main to take a moment to properly appreciate the castle’s denizens’ role for inspiring a fairy tale, which rather uniquely as far as we know stands out among the folk-stories collected and studied by the Brothers Grimm as some thing based in fact—that is, as far as we know. Before visiting what is known as das Schneewittchen Schloß (Snow White’s Castle), however, and wondering how the oral-tradition of story-telling from generation to generation embellished historical happenings, we first crossed a field that dealt with communication in a thoroughly modern fashion.
Along the way, just outside of the town of Hammelburg by a German army installation was a giant array of satellite dishes. This ground station (Erdfunkstelle) beams data and other telemetry to the constellation of orbiting satellites, space probes and the International Space Station, plus probably for other applications besides civilian. It is quite an impressive and unexpected site in rural Frankonia. Next, we strolled through the storybook cobble-stone streets of the old part of Lohr and made our Snow White’s Castle—the tale being loosely based on an actual personage and event (though license was given and taken) in this town once known for its manufacture of mirrors.
At the neck ditch (Halsgraben, a dry moat that does not go all the way around) of the castle, there was another surprise of contemporary grammar, which often becomes inseparable from one’s locus and trajectory, a geo-data reference point, fixed coordinates employed to calibrate positioning systems and correct for drift. The juxtaposition was pretty thought-provoking and we were given to wonder how course-correction and detours into the fairy tale archetypes are both guiding factors.