20200202

Civil registries in China plan to work overtime on the upcoming palindromic date February second (20200202) which are generally regarded as auspicious times (see also) to accommodate higher than usual demand for wedding ceremonies, but this day especially so as said together in quick succession, two-zero sounds like love-you in Mandarin. Though some administrators are urging people to shelve their superstitions and focus on a harmonious marriage in practical ways, the demand for certificates is expected to be similar to January fourth of 2013—the singular date going down as Love You Forever day—again due to a phonetic likeness.

konudagur

The date of observance and tone having shifted significantly since the Icelandic calendar was first codified and presently equivalent to Valentine’s Day, Woman’s Day has settled on this day—having beforehand been held on the first day of the month of Góa—which could fall anywhere between the eighteenth and the twenty-fifth of February, due to the strictly solar character of the traditional way of keeping track of the passage of time which employed interstitial weeks rather than leap days every few years to correct for seasonal creep. The extra week called sumarauki was always inserted into the summer and the rather ingenious and tidy system developed in the 900s had twelve months of thirty days each (three hundred and sixty plus four epagomenal ones) and the months always began on the same day of the week. The old Icelandic year was divided between “short days” (see also here and here)—Skammdegi—that described the length of daylight during the winter and its corollary “nightless days”—Náttleysi. The dark and harsh first half of the year consisted of:

• mid October – mid November: Gormánuður, Gór’s month which marked the time to harvest and slaughter livestock for the winter
• mid November – mid December: Ýlir, Yuletide 
• mid December – mid January: Mörsugur, feasting time 
• mid January – mid February: Þorri, dead of Winter 
• mid February to mid March: Góa 
• mid March to mid April: Einmánuður, the month of transition

Summer is welcomed with Sumardagurinn fyrsti and the six months of unending days, many named after now forgotten goddesses—making an even stronger argument to honour the women in your lives all year around, follow with:

• mid April – mid May: Harpa, the beginning of Summer 
• mid May – mid June: Skerpia 
• mid June – mid July: Sólmánuður, the sunny month 
• mid July – mid August: Heyannir, time to dry the hay for the livestock 
• mid August – mid September: Tvímánuður, for some reason, the second month 
• mid September – mid October: Haustmánuður, autumn sets in

sua sponte

Never to be accused of being an old romantic at heart, Pope Paul VI issued on this day in 1969 the Mysterii Pascchalis, reforming the liturgical year and revising the calendar of the saints.
This motu proprio (from the Latin, at one’s own accord) represents an official decree not prompted by another or in response to current developments or findings yet still has the force of law regardless of motivation, among other things struck many figures from the Calendarium Romanum, the cycle of celebrations called the Proper of Saints—to include Saint Valentine, whose feast day coincided with the decree. Only wanting to preserve the rites that were truly of universal importance to the faith, the Pope deleted or transposed nearly fifty solemnities for all our favourites, mostly due to redundancy or their problematic histories, including the saintly family of Maris, Martha, Abachum and Audifax, Canute of Denmark, Dorothy of Caesarea, Faustinus and Jovita, Ursula and her companions, Simeon, the Seven Sleepers and Saint Barbara.

6x6

art brut: the incredible portfolio of outsider artist (previously here, here and here) Adolf Wölfi

gamalost: Norway’s campaign to re-popularise a crumbly and aromatic cheese with reputed libidinous qualities—via Nag on the Lake

call sign: radio station logos of the Soviet Union—via Coudal Partner’s Fresh Signals

hey! wait! I’ve got a new complaint: a brief history of the heart-shaped box and how it became a Valentine’s staple

mirror, mirror: the label on this sun-screen bottle are printed backwards to be more photogenic

word vectors: advanced translators are an endorsement Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theories on language

6x6

marenostrum: deconsecrated church in Barcelona houses Catalonia Polytech’s super computer

el helicoide: the dreadful-excellence of Caracas’ space age intelligence services headquarters turned into a sprawling prison complex

ectoplasm: nothing is prepared for the overwhelming slime of the hagfish

love you: we face our first Valentine’s Day bereft of classic Sweethearts candy, the company having folded back in July

accumulus nimbus: a gallery of skies and cloudscapes from arcade games, via Present /&/ Correct

visa-free score: limits of roaming without a passport and other quirks of international travel 

7x7

shuffleboard: some interesting facts about the sport of curling

wait, wait—don’t tell me: a public television programme or something Liam Neeson would say to a burrito right before eating it

official portraits: artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald commissioned by the Smithsonian to create paintings of the Obamas

nocturlabe: an instrument to determine local time at night based on the relative position of the stars

suffragetto: a century’s old board game that pits equal-rights activists against the police

hermetically open: Amsterdam’s private Ritman Library brings over sixteen hundred occult manuscripts on-line with the help of Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown

how u hot: a neural network generates phrases for chalky candy hearts

7x7

apex and apogee: the spacecraft graveyard at Point Nemo

thar she blows: conservation efforts to restore the longest painting in America, a scrolling panorama of whaling on the high seas around the world, via Nag on the Lake

pepijn en merjn: a Dutch suburb that’s styled itself after characters of Middle Earth

swaddling: cocooning technique from Japan purporting to alleviate pain and stiffness   

äitiyspakkaus: Finnish style cardboard bassinets are being issued to new parents in New Jersey, via Super Punch

curiouser and curiouser: anamorphic, mirrored pieces sculpted to commemorate the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

homersexual: how John Waters’ cameo on The Simpsons (twenty years ago) kicked off an inclusive revolution on television, via Kottke

eros and agape

Valentine’s Day in its received format has a pretty interesting history of conflation, segregation and outright confusion. As the Roman Empire was filling its calendar with holidays, the day preceding the Ides of February became sacred to Juno (Hera), the long-suffering spouse of Jupiter (Zeus), who was among many other attributes and kennings, the patroness of marriage and newly-weds. Accordingly, this date began a favoured time for nuptials and young boys and girls, whom were normally strictly separated throughout the rest of the year, in anticipation for the coming feast distributed ballots, lots with their names on them and later—during the following feast of Lupercalia, pairs were drawn and the two youths would be “married” for the duration of the festivities before being parted again, to be later married off under more customary, strategic conditions arranged by their parents.
I do not know if any of these sweethearts pined afterwards but graver unimpassioned measures were to be introduced during the first decades of the three hundreds when, according to legend, there was a backlash against the recalcitrant Christian community, under the reign of Aurelian (and later repeated by Diocletian) who was distrusting of their anti-social behaviours in not observing the rites of the Empire and aside from tossing them to the lions forbade marriage (but this may have also been a more general-order, irrespective of affiliation) since matrimony was not conducive to going off to war. A hero was produced, as is often the case (and another during the Diocletian persecution with the same cognomen and guilty of the same crimes against the state), in the person of Valentino, who performed in cognito wedding services in accordance with Church customs. This underground community was infiltrated and an unrepentant Valentine (and his later incarnation) were thrown in prison. One of the Valentines had an audience with the Emperor (Claudius Gothicus, according to some) who was sympathetic to his cause at first, but the Valentine got a little too preachy and the Emperor had him executed anyway. Both martyrdoms took place at the head of Lupercalia and as a symbol for fidelity and family—though I suppose there could only be one Valentine with that sort of patronage. Though Valentine greetings were sent first in the late Middle Ages, it was not until Victorian times that the spirit of the holiday recaptured that original sense of the lottery and flirtation—and continued admiration. Happy Valentines’ Day everybody!

five-by-five

my precious: a brilliant equation of the One Ring to the allures of technology

love token #9: a look at Victorian forget-me-nots for Valentine’s Day

i-spy: nickle-tour of some of the grandiloquent bastions of espionage

reboot: how the TV show Friends might look today

reaction faces: dramatic gesticulations from a nineteenth century guide

jenny don’t change your number, i’m gonna make you mine

Although the object of his affection extolled in rather cheesy verse was won over as a woman to be respected in her own right and a constant companion in the fight for his cause, the love poetry—looking forward to Saint Valentines’ Day, that Karl Marx penned for his beloved, Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny von Westphalen can make anyone proud and secure in his or her romantic overtures.

As a philosopher, author and theatre-critic (recalling how Marx later expounded, ideally, that every man ought to have the luxury after an honest day’s labour to be a critic in the evening) in her own right, Jenny Marx was swooned by such lines:
See! I could a thousand volumes fill,
Writing only “Jenny” in each line,
Still they would a world of thought conceal,
Deed eternal and unchanging Will,
Verses sweet that yearning gently still,
867-5309.

eros, agape, xenia, storge, philia

pedigree pelecanus

There was a happy and romantic friend waiting to abush me in the shower for Valentine's Day when I got home.