an american in paris (13. 593)

Courtesy of Messy Nessy Chic via a link roundup that celebrates the US’ special relationship with France as told though its expatriates and exiles, we learn about American Air Force veteran and expert archer Erika Eiffel (née LaBrie) whom married the famous tower in a commitment ceremony in 2007. Polyamorous by nature, Eiffel first discovered her unique subcategory of paraphilia after an attempted sexual assault by a fellow cadet in the academy, rebuffing her attacker with a training sword, which she was reluctant ever to be without, then credits her skill with archery to her relationship with her bow, Lance. After her first visit to the tower in 2004, Eiffel felt an immediate connection on several levels and was inspired to found an organisation for those with similar feelings for inanimate objects (see also here and here) and advocate how love is reciprocated and empowering, as she explained in an interview with Good Morning America and the Tyra Banks’ Show. Aside from the mythical sculptor Pygmalion and Quasimodo’s love for the bells of Notre Dame, real life examples include a Swedish woman who wed the Berlin Wall in 1979 and an Australian woman who married Le Pont du Diable in Hérault in 2013.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: returning via Switzerland plus a new Labour government for the UK

three years ago: a banger from Janet Jackson, more links to enjoy, Tynwald Day in Manx, the Tiny Awards plus pull-tabs for canned beverages

four years ago: Saint Zoe plus a passport for the stateless (1922)

five years ago: points of departure 

six years ago: Thomas Cook travel agency (1841), a 90s music festival generator plus even more links

karlstadt am main (13. 590)

 

 

Next we travelled further into the Franconian wine-growing region of Main-Spessart to Karlstadt facing the Karlsburg, the village of Mühlbach hosting the castle ruins (destroyed during the Bauernkrieg in 1625) and harbour on the opposite bank of the river. The thirteenth century town on the eastern shore was founded by the bishopric of Würzburg to defend its territories against the marauding Counts if Rieneck, the streets of the Altstadt laid out like a chessboard.

 

We hiked up to the remains of the spur fortress, built sometime before the eighth century, perhaps at the direction of Charles Martel, situated on the broad rocky promontory overlooking the river and valley below, the landscape of fields, pastures and vineyards now dominated by huge silos where agricultural products are stored, staged and loaded onto barges.  Though I did not capture it in the best light, we appreciated the photogenic signage that the town had on display at the river bank, like they have for Amsterdam, Gdańsk, etc.

a syntopicon (13. 581)

Coined especially for the two volume with the Neo-Latin term meaning a collection of topics, the two volume register of one hundred two great ideas of the Western canon, was compiled and catalogued by philosopher and professor Mortimer J Adler, published by Encyclopaedia Brittanica Press in 1954 as an index to accompany the fifty-four library of Great Books of the Western World, covering literature and though from Homer to Freud. I can recall seeing these books near the circulation desk at my alma mater as well as the shelves of the volumes in was made to guide at home, though I don’t think I was tempted to consult it to investigate how the individual works corresponded and overlapped, which is a bit of travesty considering the amount of effort and hours of reading it took to synthesise the writing of some seventy authors and something I will have to peruse. Like a Wikipedia gloss, it is a footnote and a hyperlink, and not just a cross-reference of themes or concordance but rather an instrument of liberal education itself for discovery and research and finding the unity in ideas that sometimes can be muddled and masked by language, examining each entry from multiple different angles, breaking each into several sub-topics. Afterwards, Adler edited the single volume Propædia or “Outline of Knowledge” as an appendix for the venerable encyclopaedia marshalling human knowledge into a logical frame work from 1974 to 2010, when the last print edition was issued.

synchronoptica

one year ago: unblogged Breton (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: Lago Delio 

three years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a registry of Americana

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: your daily demon, Mario theme inspiration, the year’s midpoint, a banger from Tracy Chapman plus a visit to Oberwaldbehrungen

six years ago: even more links, Airplane! (1980) plus the US Civil Rights Act (1964)

deep blue something (13. 574)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo and deliciously reminiscent of the harried and hued colour profiles appearing in the Paris Review and the Awl right before folding, we are directed to this delightful project chasing down the paper trail of pigments, one colour per day with its chemistry, provenance and poison. There are over two-hundred fifty already indexed, like the pale jade glaze originally from ancient Chinese ceramic-making techniques, this greenwear copied by Korean and Japanese artisans (the greyish shade comes from oxidising iron during the firing of kilns, Fe₂O₃→FeO, and the Western namesake is from a character in a popular seventeenth century French pastoral novel, L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé, who dressed in light green garb—no relation to the Celadons Ovid’s Metamorphoses or International Klein Blue, a synthetic ultramarine with connections to the Nouveau réalisme movement and among the first pigments to be successfully patented. Each entry has adjacent palettes and new specimens are posted Sundays. I feel like this is site I will return to often.

kilroy was here (13. 559)

Via Web Curios, we quite enjoyed this well-researched history of one of the first proto-memes (see also here and here) of modern times in the graffito tag propagated by US and British service members during WWII, to mark the arrival of forward units in far-flung bases and for the soldiers to come, a phatic communion—anonymous and a gesture of camaraderie, in Kilroy was Here. The long-nosed figured peering over a fence, drawn on walls, equipment and any other bare surface also went by the other monickers—with strong resonance for contemporary meme culture—in Chad and the Goon, with the more nuanced UK-format captioned, according to context, with the snowclone, “Wot, no X?” as a way to complain about supply shortages at the front and rationing back home. Hitler and Stalin were supposedly convinced that Kilroy was some sort of codeword used by Allied intelligence. The lament over wartime austerity is considered one possible origin of the figure this side of the Atlantic, another being a shipyard inspector in Quincy Massachusetts, one James J Kilroy, who marked his seal of approval with the phrase in crayon on riveters’ work—yet another suggestion, the character might have started with a case of pareidolia in electricians over circuit schema—in any case, the versions merged, incorporating the different elements of the lore and was an early modern example of memetic forces, underpinned by repetition, variation and driven by the collective logistics of the war effort.

forget it, jake—it’s chinatown (13. 536)

As our faithful chronicler informs, the neo-noir classic directed by Roman Polanski and starring Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicohson, John Huston, Diane Ladd and Burt Young was released on this day in 1974 to critical acclaim. Over the milieu of the California water wars, a series of political conflicts over water rights at the turn of the last century with the expansion of Los Angeles and the construction of aqueducts to divert resources from Owens Valley and Mono Lake used by ranchers and farmers, a woman, calling herself Evelyn Mulwray, engages a private detective to keep on whom she says is her husband, a civil engineer with the California public utility department. The investigator photographs the subject with another woman, exposing their apparent affair, but then is confronted by the engineer’s real wife, concluding that the impostor set up her husband in order to discredit him and prevent the discovery of a complex conspiracy to hoard water whilst the city is experiencing a drought. Parallel to Dunaway’s scripted revelation “My sister! My daughter!”—the film could be read as a retelling of Oedipus Rex, a plague exploited to gain power ultimately reflecting the endemic corruption of society, misidentification, and a maimed protagonist who realises the truth too late to affect the outcome—genealogists working for Time magazine informed Nicholson after the making Chinatown that his sister was, in real life, was actually his mother, raised by his grandparents as their own son when the actor was born out of wedlock to showgirl June Frances Nicholson. On learning this fact at age thirty-seven, he acknowledged it was a “pretty dramatic event but it wasn’t what I’d call traumatising…I was pretty well psychologically formed.”

i spy with my little eye (13. 529)

The latest from Neal Agarwal (previously), Wiki Spy, invites one to explore nearly forty-thousand images from Wikipedia (see also) as chaotic collages that reshuffle with every visit. Clicking on the picture brings one to the source article, as in off-centre, William Hogarth and his pugnacious pug, Trump, who has his own entry and category in the Commons. Let us know what pops out for you and piques your curiosity.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to Verdun (with synchronoptica)

two years ago: hair shavings as battery components plus more mysterious monoliths 

three years ago: Rocky Horror Picture Show (1973) plus assorted links to revisit 

four years ago: more links to enjoy, Juneteenth, SS Gervasius and Protasius plus designer Lutz Colani

five years ago: rendered realities plus generative textile patterns

six years ago: unclergyable offenses, more dazzle camouflage, Trump censored on social media plus the dance of the queen bee

the battle of guantánamo bay (13. 500)

After four days of fighting, a battalion of US marines, conducting training exercises in the Florida Keys whilst awaiting orders, on this day in 1898 landed in the strategically chosen, for protection during hurricane season, forward operating base in the commercially important harbour to begin the liberation of Cuba from the Spanish with invasion and subsequent occupation. Though regular forces and pro-colonialists guerrilla fighters held Guantánamo City, the railhead and nearby sugar mills, the American forces, four companies of around six hundred-fifty men, arrived without opposition on the ridge above a fishing village, burning down the huts and a blockhouse—noting that the only sound to be heard was peaceful cooing of mourning doves, later learning that it was a signal used amongst partisans. Despite some resistance, the marines and pro-independence fighters were able to rout Spanish forces. America established GITMO in this location and has leased the property ever since from the Cuba government, though no remittances have been deposited.

leval ii (13. 489)

 

For the first time on a return trip, I think, we stayed again at the campsite outside the village of Leval near the German border for the last overnighter before getting back home, prepared this time now to try to capture some images of the brooding stork nests that seemed to occupy every available eave and column of the little town.

The wading birds are considered a symbol of Alsace of course—we hadn’t encountered such a preponderance of them before—and the subject of many legends and folktales, like the tradition of the Easter bunny that also originated here, first described by fifteenth-century botanist (see also) Georg Franck von Franckenau of Strasbourg, and though their association with fertility and expectant mothers go back to Ancient Egyptian myth, the lore was especially articulated in the Middle Ages, with storks said to retrieve babies from a nursery hidden inside caves and dropped them down the chimney (chimney-sweeping also understood psychoanalytically as an expression wish fulfilment or magical-thinking) of desirous households.

synchronoptica

one year ago: curating the Apocalypse (with synchronopticæ) plus Elton John’s debut album

fifteen years ago: misused tools plus macroeconomic woes

sixteen years ago: the year of the Tiger 

 

 

via rhôna (13. 487)

 

Our intermediate stop on the way back home brought us again to the banks of the Drôme, staying at a municipal campground on les Îles de Silon directly on the confluence of the the Galaure and Rhône rivers on the outskirts of the village Saint-Vallier. A Gallo-Roman station, called Ursuli, at least since the reign of Claudius on the Via Agrippa, the town is now stop on the EuroVelo cycle route that runs from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean, following the river valley.

These step-up bivouacs are specially made to accommodate bikers and we thought we could manage such a construction at the edge of our property for bikers passing through—addressing the lack of real pitches in our village. Saint-Vallier’s most famous daughter was the fourteenth century courtesan Diane de Poitiers, who wielded much power and influence as Henri II’s royal mistress and adviser. Killed in a jousting accident, the king’s widow, Catherine de’Medici, had de Poitiers exiled after his death and Catherine’s unpopular regency for the legitimate heirs was highly unpopular and destabilising, leading to the French Wars of Religion.

betz mystery sphere (13. 486)

Discovered in late March by a family of three whilst investigating a small brush fire on their property on Fort George Island, Florida, the bowling ball sized spherical object weighing ten kilograms was first thought to be an artefact of New World conquistadors, a canon ball, despite discrepancies in the metallurgy and general pristine state. Before consigning the object to a trunk, brought out occasionally to show friends and neighbours the curiosity, family members reportedly observed the sphere reacting to the sound of guitar playing, rolling about on its own and following people around the house. Though earlier examination by the US navy concluded that the sphere was nothing more than an oversized ball bearing used as a check valve in a paper mill, the Betz’ find was again the subject of study on this day in 1974 of attendees of a scientific conference sponsored by the National Enquirer, the tabloid offering an honorarium for any object proven to come from outer space. The expert panel agreed with the previous assessment though the lore persisted for decades, the sphere’s movements ultimately attributed (see also) to its machined balance and the unevenness of the Betz’ home.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ), seeing is not believing, graphic design of the Incas, Merz meets with Trump plus Musk and Trump’s public falling out

fourteen years ago: monster of the week 

seventeen years ago: Friday afternoon deadlines 

in search of… (13. 479)

Polymath and multi-hyphanate, Dr Robert Harvey Rines, whom helped develop the Microwave Early Warning System in the Cold War after serving as an officer in the army signals corps, as trained a jurist for intellectual property, prolific inventor, librettist penning musicals about the life of HL Mencken (previously) among others, violin prodigy playing a duet with Albert Einstein at age eleven at a summer camp in Maine, and adjunct professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the last forty five years of his career, is probably best known for leading the American expedition, sponsored by the US Academy of Applied Sciences and the The New York Times, the quest for Nessie, the most thorough and comprehensive search for the Loch Ness Monster up to that time, that commenced on this day in 1976. Becoming obsessed with the mystery of a possible cryptid after a visit to the area four years, Rines launched a scientific safari provisioned with sophisticated sonar and photographic, many instruments of his own design, and whilst garnering a great deal of publicity for his efforts, including several intriguing but blurry photographs, after six months, the project was halted due to lack of hard evidence. This famous “gargoyle head” image was later discovered to be a rotting tree stump on the silty bottom of the loch, since located and put on display in the Nessie gallery at Drumnadrochit on the western shore. Rines for his part never stopped believing that there was more to the legend and kept up the exploration, albeit on a smaller scale, for the next decades.

synchronoptica

one year ago:  automated purging of US government workers (with synchronopticæ) plus a Star Trek: TNG superfan

fourteen years ago: looking forward to our Norway holiday 

fifteen years ago: Ascension Day 

sixteen years ago: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill 

corti (13. 477)

 

Traveling on inland to Haute Corsica, we drove through the dramatic and picturesque Restonica valley with the reservoir of Calacuccia to the island’s centre and explored the city of Corte (Corti), which under the leadership of statesman and resistance fighter Pasquale Paoli led the independence movement first from the Genoese and later the French, was the capital of the free republic from 1755 to 1769. The desire for self-determination has not fade in the ensuing centuries, evinced by the defaced, blacking out the French spelling of place names, and bullet-ridden roadsigns not a protest to over-tourism (though I suspect that might be a factor, with some of the traffic snarls encountered) and nationalist symbols and regular demonstrations at Paoli’s namesake university, and after the French takeover, the Corsican patriot was exiled to Britain, becoming rather a cause célèbre.

After the French Revolution, which Paoli initially supported until realising that the Bonapartes and their compatriots were devising a restoration and more of the same, and helped establish the short lived client state of the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom (Riame anglu-corsu) under George III but was unable to prevent French reoccupation. A young Napoleon, member of the national guard and supporter of Corsican autonomy, idolised Paoli, but the affection was not mutual, seeing them, Napoleon’s father, Carlo Maria, an attorney from Ajaccio, had briefly served with Paoli in the resistance but changed sides to become a collaborator, as opportunists and untrustworthy. During the father’s time in Corti, Napoleon’s eldest brother, Ghjuseppe Bonaparte, was born—who trained also as a lawyer used his position within the revolutionary government of the First Republic to incite the Coup d’Ètat of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII, and install his sibling as chief consul—eventually leading to his coronation as Emperor of the French. As a consolation prize for being as over as the first born, Joseph was elevated to the rank of King of Naples and Sicily—much to the irritation of the dethroned incumbents—and later King of Spain and the Indies. Whereas Giuseppe I was able to court the elites in Italy, Jose I was deeply despised by his Spanish subjects who called him Pepe Botella (Joe Bottle) for his reputation for being a bad drunk, eventually revolting.

 

After the Battle of Leipzig and Waterloo, Joseph styled himself as Comte de Survilliers (the count of a small town northeast of Paris) and moved to Bordentown New Jersey, commissioning the estate Point Breeze in 1816, at the time, the largest residence in North America. The city was a beautiful jumble of ancient houses, ramparts and a belvedere overlooking the Renaissance era citadel—again built by Genovese occupiers—and the inhabitants, the Curtinesi, were friendly and welcoming. 

 

According to legend, the city was founded by a Trojan knight, choosing a spot in the middle of the island to maintain his authority over local tenant lords. Corsica came under the vassalage of the Roman Empire during the Punic Wars, the imperial forces routing the armies of the natives and Carthage during a territorial dispute. In the seventh century, it was taken by the Saracens. Genoa intervenes in the fourteenth century to drive out the Moors (remind me, we need to talk about Maurice) and with brief but multiple periods of ecclesiastical rule by local bishops the entire island comes under control of governors appointed by the Doge in 1511.

gobierno militar estadounidense (13. 451)

With the formal withdrawal of the caretaker military government of the United States on this day in 1902 and the constitution, in part dictated and amended with several riders and preconditions, drawn up the previous year, the Republic of Cuba declared its independence with Tomás Estrada Palma, formerly the leader of the revolutionary junta of La República de Cuba en Armas that fought to free itself from Spanish rule prior to the invention of William McKinley’s Spanish-American war, with the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbour a catalyst for the conflict—blamed on Spanish loyalists but likely upon reexamination due to a boiler accident—which resulted in the annexation of Cuba and the Philippines, taking office as the first president. Before the constitution was enacted, the Platt amendment was incorporated, with seven articles primarily stipulating that Cuba would lease America land for naval stations and coal mining activities, not allow any other foreign powers the same privileges, and for the US to intervene unilaterally in domestic affairs of the island in order to protect business interests and the expatriate population, though the limits of this intervention were never defined, in exchange for the departure of US troops and ensuring that the segregationist policies of the occupation would be lifted. Two years into his second term in 1906, Estrada Palma and his cabinet resigned without appointing a successor, allowing the US to retake control as an occupying force under the arrangement of the Platt amendment lasting until 1909 when a government sympathetic to American sensibilities could be installed.

grimthorpe (13. 443)

Named for King’s Council, Edmund Beckett, the title of peerage created within the county of York in 1886 for the controversial barrister, architect and horologist, elevated from the rank of baronet to baron, the eponym (see also), we learn via Curious Notions, was came about in the press in reference to his oversight role in the renovation of the much beloved Norman era cathedral of St Albans, the abbey dedicated to Britain’s first Christian martyr. Fiercely criticised at the time and causing a public outcry for alterations to the transept and the roofline, grimthorping is remodelling without sympathy, whilst lavish and expensive, not considered in keeping with the historical character of the building. So honoured for his earlier achievement as a clockwork engineer for his design of the mechanism of the chimes of Big Ben and quoted as saying “I am the only architect with whom I have never quarrelled,” Grimthorpe is buried in the churchyard of St Albans. The addition of the ensemble of the evangelists at the western entrance include St Matthew sculpted with Grimthorpe’s visage.