gegenschein (12. 583)

Light pollution being a topic of particular concern to us, appreciating the fact that we are privileged to be far removed from most of the effects and most holidays too are spend under the stars, we liked learning about the metrics that went into this app—via MetaFilter—that uses the Bortle Scale, which builds and improves upon the way astronomers generally gauge the quality of the observations, naked-eye limiting magnitude (NELM) and judging the apparent brightness of the faintest visible objects, to make a better informed assessment of one’s environs and how far those margins might extend when looking up from a given location. The enlightening nine-step classification system with visible phenomena, untethered from a specific constellation or distant galaxy, with the most optimal including the zodiacal band (false dusk), regions of the Milky Way casting shadows on the ground with starshine and the above occurance of counterglow (not pictured—it’s much more subtle than that—see here for an actual attempt to image it), a brighter spot in the night sky centred at the antisolar point caused by the backscatter of sunshine on the opposite side of the Earth by interplanetary dust. Though previously described, the term was coined by Alexander von Humboldt during his South American expeditions, noting that this slightly illuminated spot appeared at midnight.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the asteroid Pallas (with synchropticæ) plus Lonesome (1928)

thirteen years ago: more security theatre plus the Vertue of the Coffee Drink 

sixteen years ago: hundredth blog post 

jargeau (12. 556)

On the way back from Morbihan in south Brittany, we crossed back into the central Loire valley and found a nice campsite on l’île aux Moulins in the river between the later partitioned towns of Jargeau and St Denis de l’Hôtel, just outside of Orléans. This intermediate stop brought us back coincidentally to another connection with Joan of Arc.

It was here during the Hundred Years’ War, after receiving her field promotion, she had her first military success, delivering the town from English occupation on 12 June 1429–on battle’s anniversary in 1920, Joan was beatified and declared a national heroine. Following the Edict of Nantes to seek some accommodation for Protestantism, the town was split with the original community of Jargeau listed as a safe haven for Huguenots.

Symbolically as a statement against religious tolerance and to practically divide Republicans from Royalists, the ancient stone bridge linking the two communities was destroyed during the French Revolution and anti-clerical terror. The medieval foundations are still present as stepping stones but the new span was not completed until 1998. During Nazi occupation, the town was host to a concentration camp for political prisoners, specifically a KZ-Lager for Nomaden—that is, Roma and Sinti people rounded up. The area to the east of town, Le Clos Ferbois, made a memorial to the resistance and some seventeen thousand individuals who were incarcerated there.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the ancient quarter of Maccagno (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: musical performance rights in Germany, paternalism and the EU plus ad revenue

fourteen years ago: a cursed economy 

littoral (12. 563)

The commune encompassing several small villages and hamlets and islands including Île de Saint Cado and the Étel riviera, the administrative anchor town of Belz, which despite having grown as a tourist destination has retained its character as a small village only expanding off one central main street (see also) with the townhall intact with original bell tower.

The toponym is thought to have come from the Breton form of the name of the Celtic god Belenos, a serpent with the head of ram—uncoincidentally our hermit above is said to have driven out the snakes from the islands, coinciding with the destruction of many megaliths, though the prehistoric iconoclasm was not universal and most were only cannibalised for ready building material.

The community observed the eightieth anniversary of the Normandy landings and Allied flags of the UK, Canada and the US are still hanging above the streets with more information at the memorial of Belz and its involvement in the wars of the twentieth century.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the castles of Bellinzona (with synchronopticæ) plus the US supreme court grants presidents blanket immunity for official acts

ten years ago: America calling for an end to hostilities in Ukraine plus mediation and mantras 

fourteen years ago: Germany ends mandatory military service 

sixteen years ago: synthetic trees for carbon capture 

mor-bihan (12. 547)

Departing from Chion by Orléans, we made it to our primary destination in Morbihan (Breton for small see) and one of the few departments that retained its historic designation after the French Revolution reflagged subnational classifications in order to promote beyond the city of Vannes and on the gulf coast in the commune of Belz.

Legend has it that there are three hundred sixty-five islands here and the number of islets and jetties depends on how one counts them, with many too small for development much less visitors, it probably only numbers forty or so, far less than one for each day of the year, but who‘s counting?

We only took a short walk along a narrow footpath leading out of the campsite beyond its own saltwater basin and have a lot to explore and experience in this beautiful place.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Putin and Kim hold a summit (with synchronopticæ), the premiere of Evita plus the estate of Jim Henson selling off its Hollywood lot

thirteen years ago: the quasi-public character of private pensions 

fourteen years ago: more on the Greek economic crisis 

château de chinon (12. 546)

For the second leg of our journey, we returned to the Loire valley traveling in the direction of south Bretagne through Sens and Tours, bypassing most of the ensemble of châteaux but found a picturesque campsite on the opposite bank of Vienne with a direct view of the town‘s fortified castle, the last one of its kind in the region. Built on the foundations of a fifth century Gallo-Roman fort, the castle‘s present form dates from the late tenth century when the dukes of Anjou, aligned with the House of the Plantagenets—thus, England, took the town and its defensive bulwark from the king of France, and was expanded under Henry II, securing his favoured residence from his rebellious brother, Geoffrey, the Count of Nantes.

England held this region only util the early thirteen century when Phillip II took back Chinon after a month-long siege and was thereafter, with some intervening periods of neglect—infamously as a detention facility for the Knight Templar while awaiting judgment and sentencing once they had become too powerful, particularly in the eyes of the French aristocracy—used as the French royal court through the sixteen hundreds.

Joan of Arc (previously) was granted an audience with King Charles V during the Hundred Years War over the line of succession and legitimate heir to the throne and presented her vision from God for intervention in the Battle Orléans to expel English influence and political meddling once and for all. After cross examining her sanity and sincerity, Joan was granted command of the army.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ursula K Le Guin’s webpages (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

ten years ago: the Queen and consort visit Germany plus more links to enjoy

twelve years ago: Western expectations of Türkiye 

thirteen years ago: allowable letters on vehicle registration plates 

fourteen years ago: Chinese copies of European destinations 

ossuaire de douaumont (12. 545)

On our way back to southern Bretagne, we took a beautiful and peaceful campsite in the countryside near Verdun.

While there, we took a sombering drive through the World War I battle field on the trenches dug through the fields and forest amid destroyed villages and saw some of the remnants of the three hundred day and night slaughter that killed three hundred thousand with four hundred thousand more injured in a small area covering less than twenty square kilometers.

Surrounding devastated farmland was replanted with trees—the ancient forest lost—and the core of the battlefield left to Nature, restored in the intervening century.

At the heart of the slaughter lies the national ossuary and necropolis with sixteen thousand marked graves of the French dead and the former containing the unidentified bones of an estimated one hundred thirty individuals, both French and German combatants, president François Mitterand and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl famously held hand here at the memorial dedicated in 1932 in September of 1984 to honour the fallen in an act of reconciliation, understanding and friendship.

synchronoptica

one year ago: hair shavings as battery components (with synchronopticæ) plus more mysterious monoliths 

ten years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Hell is other people plus more links to enjoy

twelve years ago: tiny museums plus social contagion

thirteen years ago: willow shoots, the US army in Germany plus Switzerland’s hidden defences

fourteen years ago: using Google search to transmit secret messages 

usonian airstream (12. 537)

Though very happy with our camping trailer and certainly not in the market for a new second-home, we were very much enamoured with this collaboration between the aerodynamic caravan company known for its distinctive aluminium coachwork and Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to bring the design approach and aesthetic of the architect to mobility and travel, courtesy of Nag on the Lake. Not inspired by a single property, the unit was designed by teams from both organisations at Wright’s Taliesin West studio in Arizona, the eight-and-a-half metre model is certainly informed by the Usonian ideal—a unified vision for landscaping, civil-engineering, typified by the middle class ranch-style home, interiors exposed to the outside, free of previous architectural conventions. Although the term was popularised by Wright in a 1927 manifesto—around the same time as the introduction of the Airstream, its first use preceded the architect’s by a couple decades with a Scottish writer called James Duff Law proposed that, in deference to indigenous people, Canadians and Mexicans, inhabitants of the US had no exclusive right to the title Americans—suggesting adopting the alternate style, “Usonia”—for the United States of North Independent America, though sort of a retronym, losing nationalistic flavour in later use. The kitchenette and overall floor plan matches ours pretty closely. Much more at the links above.

hohenwartetalsperre iv (12. 500)

We took a short drive to look at the Hohenwarte dam wall (Staumauer, see previously) and took a nice long walk with the dogs down a trail through an enchanted forest (there were a lot activities set up for kids hidden amongst the trees, like our own Zwergweg) and across the basis by a former cardboard factory. We could see the Pumpspecicherwerk (pumped hydroelectric energy storage plant in the far distance, a gravitational sink that is a source of potential energy, channelling water uphill to a higher holding basis during off-peak hours and releasing it during higher periods of demand to generate electricity in the turbines.

Such a plant also allows excess energy from intermittent sources—like solar and wind—to be saved. The lake and surrounding area were full of recreational opportunities, more wandering and cruises over the length and breath of reservoir.

hohenwartetalsperre iii (12.497)

Early in the day, we took a trip to the larger town of Ranis to stock up on provisions and revisited the fortified castle, with its Ilsenhöse passage leading from the bailey to the old market recently confirmed to have some of the oldest prehistoric evidence for the settlement of Homo sapiens in the region—more than forty-five thousand years ago, particularly rare for an urbanised area.

The eleventh-century castle on a promontory overlooking the town has been in the ownership of the Germany Red Cross since 1994, the dynasty of von Breitenbuch selling the historic site for a nominal fee. Back at the campgrounds, we followed a trail along the water’s edge to a forest path littered with slate—a common architectural element for the region that afforded us some commanding views of the artistic bends in the watercourse.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a US supreme court justice flies provocative flags (with synchronoptica), a WWII battle for an Aleutian island, the anatomy of a limerick plus Trump found guilty of falsifying business records 

seven years ago: all about Ostheim

nine year ago: a wearable, in-ear translator plus giving Tumblr a try

ten years ago: Swiss cheese goes blind plus Alf’s hip-hop album

eleven years ago: mourning a ruined laptop, semi-conducting cement plus getting ready to travel to Lake Como

hohenwartetalsperre i (12.495)

 

Taking advantage of the holiday and Brückentag, H and I (with the dogs) went caravaning, returning to the reservoir created by the damming of the Saale river valley in the 1930s (see previously here and here) to chiefly mitigate flooding and found a campsite centrally located in the eighty-kilometre long lake with five successive cascading basins outside the village of Neumannshof on the water’s edge. 

The village and the municipality of Gössitz lying on a higher plateau of the foothills of the southern Schefergebirges (Slate range) is surrounded by thick woods and the Slavic name means “forest mountain.” Commissioned by optics manufacturer Carl Zeiss of Jena later for its potential for electricity production, the feat of engineering is a major source of hydropower to this day.

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons