jack nasty (12. 989)

Released for general audiences worldwide on this day in 2005 following premiers at the Venice film festival and New York City, the neo-Western by filmmaker Ang Lee—based off of the eponymous short-story by author Annie Proulx first published in the New Yorker magazine in 1997—focuses on the complicated romance between two shepherds-cum-coyboys. In pre-production since 2001, the realised film received critical acclaim and industry accolades and was among the biggest commercial successes of the decade (the first major film to be later released simultaneously as a DVD and digital download), with a global box-office (given slightly cryptic titles for foreign audiences, mostly in essence translating to “the secret of Brokeback Mountain and Túi a barátságon in Hungary, friends with benefits) markets ten-fold of its budget and stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (Matt Damon, Joaquin Phoenix, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Josh Hartnett, Edward Norton and Ryan Phillippe were among the first choices) with supporting cast of Anne Hathaway and Anna Faris, with the opening set in 1963 Wyoming. Producers rented Airstream trailers for the cast and crew to live on site (filmed primarily in Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, whose wildlife authorities made an exception to allow in domestic sheep with careful controls and limitations to ensure that they didn’t infect wild herds, though the guild defending animal actors took issue with the sheep’ shuttling to location and quarantine, resulting in digitally created flocks) with the atmosphere of a summer camp and the first intimate scene between Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar took thirteen takes before Lee was satisfied with it. Although pleased with the adaptation and screenplay, Proulx has expressed personal, not professional, regret for writing the story since the movie, receiving wide spread criticism from reply-guys who submit fan-fiction and alternative endings—fine for the unsolicited critiques but failing to recognise that the narrative arc is not some kind of choose-your-own adventure scenario.

*    *    *    *    *

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revist (with synchronopticæ) plus Noah Webster’s daily newspaper

 

twelve years ago: electro-swing plus more persuasive maps 

 

fourteen years ago: UK objections to EU budget 

 

seventeen years ago: sick days 

9x9 (12. 953)

architectural digest: a guided two-hour walking tour of New York City’s most iconic buildings  

1999 a.d.: a paleo-future vision from 1967 that asks if the cusp year will be too computerised, too cold  

shinbun: a hypnotic, phrenetic collage of Japanese newspaper clippings from 1991 to the present—see also  

meet the aphantasics: more on those who don’t form mental images 

i wool survive: a flock of ostracised gay rams from Germany have a haute-couture debut on a Manhattan catwalk  

electric pentacle: the occult detective Thomas Carnacki created by William Hope Hodgson who despite his supernatural inclinations has a skeptical side and is unafraid to use nascent technology as his red-herring or MacGuffin 

doge: the US Department of Government Efficiency quietly closed down 

field-expedient gadgets: preparing meals in maximum security plus other prison inventions  

diorama: Theria Sofia reworks Polly Pocket sets—originally fashioned from a makeup compact as a toy

helle and phrixus (12. 447)

A recently excavated domus of an elite family in Pompeii (previously)—so named above for a fresco in one room depicting a part of the myth of the Golden Fleece—recounts one family’s rather heart-rending attempt to escape from the pyroclastic eruption by barricading themselves in the main hall of the richly appointed residence, events reconstructed from the voids the long since decomposed wooden barrier of a bed litter or the dining sofas of the triclinium, an arrangement for three to eat supper semi-reclined with the fourth space left open for the servants to present various courses—an aristocratic dining format that continued into the Middle Ages, in the volcanic ash and debris.As with an estimated sixteen thousand inhabitants who perished by this disaster, the residents of the so-named Ella and Frisso home did not make it. 

The narrative shown recounts the brother and sister targeted by their wicked stepmother, Ino, daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, who came on the scene thanks to Athamas’—founder of Thessaly—philandering ways that drove away his first wife, a nymph—one of three-thousand daughters of Oceanus and Tethys—called Nephele, cursing the land with a drought as she left. Ino tried to convince Athamas that sacrificing his son was the only way to restore the rains. Intervening, as with the story of Abraham, Nephele presented a winged ram with fleece of gold—sired by Poseidon and her sister Theophane, whom transformed all the other inhabitants into animals during their ovine congress. The siblings escaped over the seas but Helle accidentally fell off over the strait of the Dardanelles, the Hellespont named in her honour whilst her brother was safely conveyed to Colchis (ეგრისი), where Phrixus dutifully sacrificed the ram to the gods, set in the stars as Poseidon’s avatar, as the constellation of Aries. Phrixus hung the pelt in a sacred grove, guarded by a dragon (a detail which always seemed to me like an welcome crossover), which Jason and the Argonauts eventually pilfered, symbolising native knowledge and techniques, sort of like Prometheus giving away secret and sacred intelligence with the gift of fire. The family who commissioned the tragic moment in this allegory could not have known how it would be unearthed two millennia later, surviving one of the best documented and studied tragedies to befall humankind—thus far.

laguna hainersee oder living lagovida (12. 399)

Returning to the Störmthaler See campgrounds for Easter weekend with a view of the floating, phantom steeple, the Vineta created to evoke the leveled settlements during the height of mining and mechanisation, we visited some neighbouring lakes and marinas reclaimed from a heavily industralised landscape like all of the Leipziger Neuseenland, the Haubitzer, Hainer and Kahnsdorfer lakes were developed in the early to mid-1990s when a large open-cast lignite coal extraction operation was flooded and slowly converted into beach-front properties with resorts and recreational boating.  

 The bulk of the land too polluted to be rehabilitated, the fields of Witnitz II stretching for kilometre in every direction, now forms the largest photovoltaic park in Europe—the endless array not being quite so photogenic under overcast skies and at speed but impressive nonetheless. Inland, Kahnsdorf features a manorial estate owned once by the scholarly family of theologians, the Ernestis of Leipzig, the property, suffering years of neglect and near demolition during the DDR era as a relict of feudalism, celebrated for hosting the introductory meeting of Friedrich Schiller and jurist Christian Gottfried Körner of Dresden, of an established household of patrons of the arts and culture who entertained Goethe, Hiller and Mozart, on the first of July 1785.  

 Later a financial backer who saved the poet from wrack and ruin, Schiller dedicated An der Freudschaft (“On Friendship”) to Körner and the pivotal moment marking the turn around of Schiller’s fortunes was the inspiration, according to the premises, for Ode to Joy. The surrounding grounds are a park and a pasture for a local group of alpaca enthusiasts who sell wool products in the cafe of the main building.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a wine so nice they named it thrice (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: robots assembling IKEA furniture, the Paris riots of 1968 plus springtime in Wiesbaden

eight years ago: an appreciation of edutainment, AI and implicit bias plus a profile of a North Korea day

nine years ago: a termite tent, the Sea-Monkey kingdom plus another experimental chatbot

eleven years ago: a light installation in Oberhausen, an arctic henge in Iceland plus EU lend-lease policy for Ukraine

big horn (11. 890)

Reminiscent of the bonkers Nazi plan to produce a quarry worthy of Nazis to hunt by bringing back the extinct aurochs, we learn that a gentleman in the US state of Montana has been sentenced and fined for his efforts to create a giant hybrid sheep though cloning and selective husbandry with Asian sheep as big game. Struggling to find a punishment to fit the crime, the judge settled on a suspended term—for lack of a criminal record—and imposed a hefty remittance to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for the upkeep of the Montana Mountain King, confiscated and in care until it can be transferred to a zoo, to discourage others from meddling with ferrel populations for trophy hunting.

monty hall enlightenment (11. 733)

Via Quantum of Sollazzo, we are invited to revisit the sometimes fiercely and vehemently counterintuitive probability puzzle based on the TV game show Let’s Make a Deal. Though it is easy to demonstrate that one should always switch doors, have a two out three chance of winning rather than staying with one’s original choice, there are an array of perfectly unreasonable factors that at play that make people stick with their original bet and believing the odds to be even, whereas they’re only ⅓ as likely to not walk away with a prize goat, the dilemma and its trenchant nature says a lot about human bias and errors of commission. Even mathematicians and physicists come to the wrong conclusion until being disabused (sometimes it never takes as our original selection is endowed by magical thinking and those times when we switch and lose cling to our minds more) by brute repetition or by positioning themselves as host and realising that certain protocols are followed in games of chance. This is a specific and tenacious example which illustrates our withering capacity for judgment but I wonder if there are analogous other odds that we similarly misunderstand.

ubi et orbi (10. 688)

Mirroring efforts of the United States to disassociate Labor Day celebrations with socialism, on this day in 1923, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini directed the celebration of the founding of Rome, not observed since the times of the Empire, on the traditional anniversary of the city’s establishment in 753 BC—possibly in parallel attempts to suppress a far older fasti that also fell on this day, the Palilia dedicated to the cleansing of sheep and shepherds, to distance its newly attained cosmopolitan character from these rural and pastoral roots. With a military parade of fifty-thousand Black Shirts through the streets on a a route from the Forum to the Baths of Caracalla under the Triumphal Arch of Titus, Mussolini decreed that this holiday would replace International Workers’ Day.

maschere a gattu (10, 580)

Via the always excellent Everlasting Blört, we are directed towards a photographic tour from Alys Tomlinson of the islands of Sardinia, Sicily and the Veneto discovering and documenting the traditional costumes and masks of local festivals, particularly but not exclusively Carnival processions. Many of the most elaborate outfits are part of the parade of Aidomaggiore, in the centre of Sardinia, garb alternating from white on the Monday before Ash Wednesday to black on the last day before Lent with the Sonaggiaos bedecked with cowbells, followed by the Mumutzones dressed as traditional shepherds with a headdress of cork and animal horns in rites celebrating transhumance syncreted with religious pilgrimage.

7x7 (10. 242)

lettuce rejoice: a bit of highly monitored produce outlasts the prime minister 

cincinattus: the real and fraught possibility that Boris Johnson could be brought back as the Tory leader

jazz swing and joy wheel: revisiting the playground and its antique architecture—via tmn  

hive mind: how studying the decision making approach of bumble bees can lend insights into the mechanics of human memory  

on pointe: ballet dancers caring for the tools of the trade  

not another experiment: UK opposition political parties call for a General Election 

every inch of you: a punny produce display

songkran

Known by several names throughout South and South East Asia influenced by the traditional Hindu solar calendar, this marks new year’s day. As opposed to the tropical year of the Gregorian reckoning that is based on the cycle of the seasons, the sidereal year is determined by the motion of the Sun relative to the celestial sphere, with the beginning of the new year synchronized to the Sun’s transit into the constellation of Aries (meṣa saṅkrānti—named for twin gods, the Ashvins, “Aja” and “Mesha” and the Sanskrit term signifying the act of transhumance—that is, when the livestock is brought to pasture).

east of eden

Venerated in the Coptic Church on this day—likely as a pious correspondence between the first murder-victim and the massacre of Childermass—Abel of Genesis, the second son of Adam and Eve, was murdered by his older brother Cain after God engendered jealously in the latter by preferring Abel’s sacrifice. Respectively a farmer and a shepherd, etymologically Cain means smith as in someone who would craft a ploughshare to work the land and Abel is the English rendering of ibil, herdsman, their story is thought to be an allegory recalling the ancient clashes between traditional hunter-gatherer societies and agricultural civilisations and concepts of the commons versus private property. God punished Cain by condemning him, ironically, to wander the Earth—with no fixed abode (this Land of Nod is an abstraction, like utopia) and no possibility of release through provoking another to kill him—ostensibly encouraging him to trespass with impunity. According to some traditions, Abel was appointed the judge of the dead.

schleicher's fable

Dying this day of tuberculosis in Jena in 1868, (*1821, Meiningen), linguist August Schleicher informs our contemporary views on the Indo-European (previously) family of languages and attempts to reconstruct a common ancestor.  Previsioning or at least parallel with the development and advancement of Charles Darwin’s evolution of species, Schleicher's comparative study was grounded in the natural descent and competition and pass through life-cycles as any living being among world language and established a system of classification based on the taxonomy of botanical varieties, modelling a Stammbaumtheorie, a family tree showing trunk, branch and twig.  Working backwards to a common ancestor, the hypothetical and at times conjectural—though malleable and subject to revision, Proto-Indo European (PIE), Schleichter illustrated his concept, vocabulary and its antecedents and what inference can be made about cultural norms and outlook through reconstruction with a brief fable: 

Using modern spelling conventions, his [The] Sheep and [the] Horses (das Schaf und die Rosse) is rendered: 

H₂óu̯is h₁éḱu̯ōs-kʷe h₂áu̯ei̯ h₁i̯osméi̯ h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ né h₁ést, só h₁éḱu̯oms derḱt. só gʷr̥hₓúm u̯óǵʰom u̯eǵʰed; só méǵh₂m̥ bʰórom; só dʰǵʰémonm̥ h₂ṓḱu bʰered. h₂óu̯is h₁ékʷoi̯bʰi̯os u̯eu̯ked: “dʰǵʰémonm̥ spéḱi̯oh₂ h₁éḱu̯oms-kʷe h₂áǵeti, ḱḗr moi̯ agʰnutor”. h₁éḱu̯ōs tu u̯eu̯kond: “ḱludʰí, h₂ou̯ei̯! tód spéḱi̯omes, n̥sméi̯ agʰnutór ḱḗr: dʰǵʰémō, pótis, sē h₂áu̯i̯es h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ gʷʰérmom u̯éstrom u̯ept, h₂áu̯ibʰi̯os tu h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ né h₁esti”. tód ḱeḱluu̯ṓs h₂óu̯is h₂aǵróm bʰuged. 

A sheep without wool saw two horses, one slowly draughting a heavily-laden wagon and the other quickly carrying a man rider.  Addressing the horses, the sheep said, “My heart pains me, seeing man driving horses.  In reply, the horses said, “Listen sheep, our hearts pain us when we witness man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself, leaving the sheep with no wool!”  Having attended to the lesson, the sheep fled into the plains. A version of this allegory appears in the Alien prequel Prometheus in a short exchange between an android and the ship’s computer to prepare for first contact with the “engineers.”

spqr

Though there are competing and incompatible origin myths—neither of which square with the archaeological evidence that suggest human settlement in the area is far older, the traditional date for the founding of Rome was on this day in 753 BC (Ab urbe condita 1), eschewing the other candidates for founding father, Aeneas who fled from Troy or Greek Evander from Arcadia or Romos, the son of Circe and Odysseus, by Romulus.
Born along with his twin brother Remus in Alba Longa not far from where the future city would be, the pair were the offspring of Rhea Silva, a vestal virgin and holy priestess, and a visitation by the god Mars (Ares), the king and maternal uncle Amulius who had displaced his own brother Numitor ordered them abandoned to the elements, fearing that they could challenge his claim on the throne and set them adrift on the Tiber. The twins were adopted and suckled by a she-wolf and sheltered in a cave dubbed the Lupercal. Eventually fostered by the shepherd Faustulus and civilised, both became partisans, not knowing anything of their parentage or history, becoming involved in a dispute between supporters of Numitor and his usurper Amulius. With both king and dethroned grandfather suspecting his true identity, Remus was captured and imprisoned. Learning of their past and succession disputes, Romulus launched a campaign to free his twin brother and reinstate Numitor as ruler of Alba Longa. The twins were dispatched afterwards to found a new settlement disagreed over its location, with Remus favouring the Aventine Hill and Romulus preferring Palatine (Mons Palatinus). Omens and augury failed to settle matters definitively and the conflict escalated, resulting in the death of Remus, either by his brother’s own hand or one of his supporters.

saint drogo

Coming from noble stock in Flanders but orphaned as an adolescent then dispossessing himself of his inheritance and devoting his life to penance and pilgrimage—making the sojourn to Rome no less than ten times—and settling down to become a shepherd after a disfiguring disease confined him from the public, Saint Drogo of Sebourg (*1105 – †1186), who is venerated on this day, was reportedly given the power of bilocation and was seen—shrouded due to his hideous countenance—in attendance at Mass while, as witnesses attest, still tending his flock in the fields.  Drogo’s patronage includes those whom others find repulsive, coffee house proprietors (that is someone to turn to at these times), midwives (presumably due to his great empathy and for the mother he never knew) and sheep. While it is unclear why coffee might be one of his attributes, it is not just a modern gimmick with documents from Mons showing that in the 1860s, the city’s guild of cafetiers were already claiming Drogo as their patron—and possibly is connected with his miraculous power of bilocation (a virtue of coffee) or his ascetic diet and insistence on only drinking hot water.

weideabtrieb

H and I had the chance to observe an interesting agricultural event when the shepherds bring the sheep and goats down from hilltop pastures to the valley in a village not far away. It was quite well attended with human spectators perhaps outnumbering the livestock being herded and driven to their winter quarters. 

Though cattle were also present, the stars of the day were the distinctive Rhön sheep (Rhönschaf) whose single flock numbered over one thousand, the breed nearly having gone extinct in the 1960s and now their numbers, with the help of a nature conservancy and the green belt across Europe that marks the former border between NATO and the Warsaw Pact have safely returned, led through a rather narrow channel thronged by a human audience—not unlike the scene in Pamplona with the Running of the Bulls.

einn af hjörðinni

The BBC Monitoring desk reports that one of the most anticipated annual registries among Icelandic shepherds (and we suppose among eligible sheep as well) has just been published with profiles of the country’s most sought-after ram bachelors, continuing a tradition of two decades of showcasing sires and obituaries for those who passed away since the last issue.
Seeing these impressive sets of horns reminded me that the release of the catalogue is coinciding with a plebiscite—direct democracy in action—taking place in Switzerland over the weekend on animal welfare, with voting finally taking place after an eight-year struggle to hold the referendum. At stake is the right for cow and goat farmers to receive special dispensation and compensation (due to the accommodations and bigger stalls required to safely rear the animals) who choose not to dehorn their herds. About a quarter of Swiss livestock are of the horned variety. The referendum’s human champion wants to take the question of economics out of the decision—which sounds rather ghastly and traumatising—and calls for subsidies instead of indignities.

rewilding

We took a drive through the countryside and stopped at the foothills of the Rhön and hiked up the stony and wooded slope of the Schafstein, the Sheep Rock. A lot of forests are maintained in a sustainable manner (or at least so we’d like to hope, not really appreciating the impact of our harvesting has on the ecosystem) in Germany but there are few untrammelled places but since the 1990s, the inner core of the trees growing here, within a much larger reserve, have been left to their own devices in hopes of re-establishing an old-growth forest.
Please click on the pictures for larger images.  Basalt boulders and fallen trunks covered with different mosses punctuated the terrain and were stepping stones for the ascent, not treacherous but certainly a demanding climb. Let’s hope more places are allowed to revert to their pristine state. Afterwards we continued on to Guckaisee, a series of lakes at the base of the mountain whose water levels had been essentially negated due to the hot, arid summer—though visiting ducks were content to plop into the lake bed and do a little bit of mud surfing.

transumanza

The Local’s Italian edition reports that the country is seeking to add the traditional nomadic herding practise of transhumance to the UNESCO register of intangible cultural heritage—following the successful bid to have Neapolitan pizza included last December. Ultimately derived from the Latin for crossing ground, the term includes herding-customs and the season driving of flocks of livestock to greener pastures. Of course, the profession of shepherds is not exclusive to Italy but central and southern regions of the country have preserved much of the ancient networks of herding routes—referred to as tratturi, some of which are still in use.

alpha predator

Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we learn of the successful trial run of a robotic monster to mitigate human and wildlife competition for resources that’s a sort of next generation of scarecrow. Orchard-keepers and rice farmers in Japan can now summon the juggernaut Super Monster Wolf as a means of keeping wild boars out of their chestnut groves and rice paddies without resorting to more lethal countermeasures.
Its prowling and howls are adaptive so its quarry does not grow inured to its presence and the terrifying turns into the laughable. Having had a close-call with one of these hulking beasts (not pictured—this one was relatively tame and confined to a wild park), we wonder if Super Monster Wolf could be persuaded to patrol different beats besides safeguarding crops in order to keep animals away from busy roads and out of harm’s way. Be sure to visit the links up top to learn more and see a video demonstration of Super Wolf in action.

your prize—a nubian goat

As a reminder to engage with story-telling more often—especially in its unmediated venues and within the limits the author limned for his voice—we really enjoyed this romp, via Coudal Partners, through the paperback canon of Philip K Dick with thirty-three picks of bizarre covers from domestic and international markets.
This curated selection represents only a small portion of his forty-four novels and scores of other pieces of essay and short-fiction and one has to wonder about what tales and commentary yet remain undiscovered because it won’t translate well to other narrative formats, with a handful (this or that and the other)—having undergone major rewrites and leaving much out—emerging on the other side. Sheep and goats were not considered a booby-prize either since after the nuclear apocalypse when the book is set that has destroyed most of life on earth, empathy towards and caring for animals was seen as a mark of the highest esteem and humanity.  Though knowing the story, I thought the title referred to something aspirational but rather to a Replicant’s need to count (electric) sheep to fall asleep.  Perchance to dream.  Do you have a favourite, perhaps of another author or franchise-universe, in this genre? Maybe these wild paperback illustrations mark the closest sometimes the unfilmable, impossible to produce adaptations get to a poster in the coming attractions section.