6x6

message in a bottle: researchers tagged plastic waste with electronic trackers to monitor their journey—from the same team that brought us Mister Trash Wheel 

pfizer-biontech: British nonagenarian first to receive the coronavirus vaccine  

wunderpus photogenicus: deep sea diver photographs an incredible infant octopus with a transparent head

toot your own horn: more butt trumpets and other bizarre imagery in manuscript marginalia 

catsa lander mark-1: a gorgeous space-age cat bed—though our feline friends would be more pleased with a shoebox

2014-076a: Hayabusa2 (previously) successfully returns its asteroid sample to Earth

world soil day

Established by the International Union of Soil Sciences during its 2002 conference in Bangkok, the annual observance—from 2005 on—sanctioned by the United Nations is meant to promote the importance and greater understanding of the natural resource and its preservation by the prevention of erosion and pollution both for agricultural purposes and maintaining ecological stability. The society selects a soil type to highlight for each year with 2020’s signature earth being bay mud or estuarine silt (Watt), the sort that compose tidal flats and coastal wetlands.

8x8

vangelis: with ambient sounds and moments of dialogue interspersed, the soundtrack from Blade Runner is extended into a feature-length soundscape  

metaphorical portraits: deep and heartfelt images of table-scraps and toss-aways 

sessile by nature: a nice crafted series of time-lapse movies illustrate how houseplants move throughout the day—via Things Magzine  

adobe add-on: after the announcement that support for Flash Player will be discontinued, crippling huge swaths of the early web, the Internet Archive comes to the rescue again with a forever home to hundreds of files  

upton sinclair was an optimist: chicken processing plant executives place wagers on how many workers would get sick with COVID-19  

waiting in the wings: clear and present implications of delaying the trans—Dcccf Rex zzz. @#z@smaan anaNN—see also  

you deserve a break today: a detailed look at a bespoke Nintendo DS game created as a training tool for a fast food franchise—see also  

patch cord productions: the musical stylings of Moog maestro Mort Garson

6x6

mother lode: the Hubble Space Telescope spies a metal ore asteroid worth an estimated ten-thousand times the global economy of 2019 (previously)—via Slashdot  

8800 blue lick road: one of the best accidental, immersive gaming experiences of the year is this virtual real estate tour 

franchisement: we enjoyed this pairing of articles about the “I Voted!” stickers—first with an overview of their contested origins as a badge of participation once democracy moved towards the secret ballot and the civics exercise that has artists reimagine them  

lorembarnak: a Québécois curse (see previously) generator—via Things Magazine  

seaweeding: Victorian-era hobby lends insight on our changed oceans  

one parsec: a breath-taking visualisation of ten million stars at the centre of the Milky Way

the past is another country

Two years ago—after the mid-terms—the Centre for American Politics and Design conducted a meta-survey of recently concluded political races and challenges for all types of public office to better understand the role of typography and graphic design in voting and campaigning, and are doing the same for every jurisdiction and elected official on the tickets for 2020. Explore some of the data and sample the logos (from president to dog-catcher and everything in between) included at Print Magazine at the link.

silvicultural practise

Similar in technique and results to the woodland management practises of coppicing and pollarding, we learn—via preeminent friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, that the artistic and practical application was developed in fifteenth century Kyoto as daisugi (台杉, platform cedar) as a way to redress a timber shortage. Cutting a young tree down to its stump, if done correctly, will result in numerous shoots and can prevent deforestation.  Learn more at Spoon & Tamago at the link above.

nyctinasty

Having unfortunately nothing to do with the tenacity of New Yorkers, the above vocabulary word stems from the Greek νυκτ-, nùx for night and the rhythmic, natic movements (see also) that some plants make in response to stimulus—generally light—and is colloquially referred to as plant sleeping. Most apparent in flowers closing at dusk, only a few species have the ability to reopen and fold their petals (like the pictured red tulip) and ones (the majority) that don’t demonstrate nyctinasty are called sleepless.

abscission

Rather taken with the idea of capturing fall leaves in transition ourselves, we were pleased to learn that artist Josef Albers (see previously) also—circa 1940—conducted his own foliage studies and in part out of necessity, since leaves and trees were in abundance but paper less so, encouraged his students at Black Mountain College and Yale to appreciate the beauty of the changing palette and constant rhythm of the seasons.  We ought to mount some samples on construction paper and see what sort patterns emerge.

müllerian mimicry

While at a loss to choose a favourite, we very much appreciated—in a similar vein to these apparel comparisons—this thread of Sir David Attenborough in various fancy suits and academic regalia as well as more practical outfits juxtaposed with friends from the insect world from the always splendiferous Everlasting Blört. Much more to explore at the links above, and do let us know if you’ve found a spirit animal for your own wardrobe. 

 

zwiebelzopf

Visiting a small harvest festival nearby held on Germany Unity Day, H and I looked for some autumn accents for the house and found several stalls selling traditional onion braids (Zwiebelzöpfe). 

Sometimes also incorporating garlic bulbs, the braids adorned craftily with dried wild flowers were not customarily only for decorative and storage, preservative purposes but moreover for the notion that the power of the talisman would stave off illness and harm from hearth and home. Right now we can all use all the help we can muster. Singly, onions were worn as amulets in medieval times to ward off the plague, and a New Year’s Eve custom (divination from onions is called cromniomancy—see also) in various regions, especially in the Erzgebirge, called for the dicing of an onion into twelve sections and sprinkling each bowl with salt to forecast the precipitation for each month of the year to come as the moisture drawn out of each section by the next morning would predict that month’s rainfall.

burdock and bindweed

Via our Oxford English Dictionary word of the day subscription, we are treated to a bonus pair of botanical epithets of Latinate origins in the infrequent but still in use terms ruderal and campestral.

While the latter is referring prosaically to the countryside and grasses and scrub native to rural expanses, the former from rūdera meaning rubble and the ruins of buildings applies to plants growing among rubbish or on the margins. Unfairly characterised as weeds, ruderal specimens are also accorded the sense of being forerunners, pioneers in finding a niche and thriving despite the stressful environment. A coordinate term—that is, a hypernym or subordinate word that’s in the same class—is agrestic, for uncultivated land.

1q or the feast of the archangels

Venerating Saint Michael and companions, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel in honour of their victory of Lucifer and the rebel angels in the angelomachy, Michaelmas (previously) is observed on the penultimate day of September—in some traditions, the feast extending into the next day—and has also come to one of the four quarter dates of the financial year, kept since at least medieval times to mark when school and court terms were to commence and the accounting was due to ensure that debts and unresolved cases didn’t linger (see also) into the next season.

Though the customary hiring fairs and local elections do not necessarily adhere (the tradition is retained for the election of London’s lord mayor, just as peasants during the Middle Ages would appoint a reeve from among their peers to represent their interests to the manor) to the same calendars, this time of year—still referred to as the Michaelmas term for matriculating students in England, Scotland and Ireland and for the US Supreme Court’s and the English bar’s Inns of the Court’s fall sessions and of course it marks the end and beginning of the fiscal year for budget purposes. Asters or the Michaelmas daisy are one of the few flowering plants left at the beginning of autumn, and thus inspiring the rhyme and invocation: “Michaelmas daisies among dead weeds, bloom for Saint Michael’s valorous deeds.”

6x6

fast car: the timelessness of Tracy Chapman’s ballad

call me trim tab: inspiring words from Buckminster Fuller (previously)

call of the wild: New Guinea’s singing dogs are not extinct outside of the captive population after all—via Nag on the Lake with bonus content

brick and mortem: a thoughtful reflection on the disappearing traditional high street, via Things Magazine

syncopation: time-lapse films of plants sprouting with a jazzy musical accompaniment

shine bright like a diamond: researchers in Bristol create betavoltaic batteries out of nuclear waste and gemstones that could last for millennia—see previously

to live alone in the bee-loud glade

Via Kottke, these superlative entries in the macro category for International Garden Photographer of the Year commended us to one recent snapshot that brought to mind William Butler Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree. What pictures from your garden are you keen to share? Explore an expansive gallery of many more superb and patient, intimate snapshots at the links up top. 

castagno dei cento cavalli

In one of the first official acts recognising and treasuring the environment, the Royal Court of Sicilian Heritage (Tribunale dell’Ordine del Real Patrimonio di Sicilia) inscribed the Hundred Horse Chestnut into rolls of protected property on this day in 1745.
The four-thousand-year old tree on the eastern slopes of Mount Etna (perhaps owing its longevity to rich volcanic soil—all the more so because of its precarious location) is believed to be the oldest in existence. Recorded as having the greatest girth—having split into a grove multiple trunks above ground, the tree received its name after local lore relating that when Queen Juana I of Castilla (called La Loca) passed through with her large entourage of knights, the entire company was able to shelter under its boughs during a thunderstorm. This venerable tree is a sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), whereas a horse chestnut is a close-cousin.

flora, fauna, fire

Via Maps Mania, we are directed to an engaging and impactful look at the devastation that Australia’s wildfires brought at the beginning of 2020 in the form of this interactive scrollytelling presentation that shares stories of recovery, prevention and links to the toll it has taken on 119 representative plants and animal species, whom may face extinction without human intervention. Though 119 is the number for firefighters and emergency services in many other jurisdictions, it’s triple zero you want to dial on the continent.

8x8

really simple syndication: Tedium explores early electronic news and digital services (see previously here, here and here)

let’s go out to the lobby: a 1979 drive-in cinema sci-fi concession advertisement

heracleum sosnovsky: creative interventions to control the toxic, invasive import known as “Stalin’s Revenge”

a shiver of sharks: research is showing the marine predator to be social creatures despite their lone, marauding reputation

iss: a digital coffee table book documenting life aboard the International Space Station

dead pilots society: a treasury of unproduced television shows—via Miss Cellania’s Links (see also)   

efterträda: IKEA reveals its branded line of apparel with a new collection

the audience is listening: the origins of Netflix’s ta-dum sound—via Things Magazine with a special edition on start-up noises

lilium martagon

Our thanks to friend of the blog Nag on the Lake for helping to identify a flower that I’ve encountered quite often in mid-June over a window of a few weeks during my walks in the woods. I had tried to research and learn what they were but having heard of an elusive and exotic local variety of orchid, I had pursued the wrong line of investigation.
The martagon lily (Türkenbund-Lilie, the epithet referring to the characteristic reflexed petals also derives from the word for a type of turban) has a range across Eurasia and is popular as a garden plant as well due to its long life span of fifty years and more. It was believed to have curative properties by practitioners of traditional medicine but is highly toxic to cats.

march march

Via Nag on the Lake, we are directed to the powerful protest anthem with accompanying music video that rallies all of us to be agitators and allies from the band The Chicks, who fortunately for everyone DID NOT just shut up and sing. “If your voice held no power, they wouldn’t try to silence you.”

pienone

As a prelude to the opera house’s 2020/2021season, earlier this week the quartet on stage of Barcelona’s El Gran Teatre del Liceu played to a full house (pienone, casa llena), ever seat filled symbolically with over two thousand house plants as the kingdom ravaged by the coronavirus enacts its measured plans for reopening. Non-vegetal fans were able to tune in remotely via live-stream and the plants donated by local florists and garden centres will be presented as gifts to front-line workers. This is lovely.
The players’s selection of song was a fitting elegy, a threnody called Crisantemi that renowned composer Puccini created for his friend Amadeo (*1845 – †1890) upon his sudden and premature death. Duke of Aosta, Amadeo was elected as king of Spain during that land’s interregnum, but frustrated by politics and intrigues two years into his reign, He declared the people of Spain to be ungovernable, abdicated and returned to Italy for a quieter life. Spain was a republic for a brief period afterwards. His son via his second marriage, Umberto, Count of Salemi, died during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.