no kings (12. 535)

“One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is ‘Yes, I am ugly, and you daren’t laugh at me’, like the bully who makes faces at his victim.” George Orville in his 1941 essay England Your England went on to ask: “Why is the goose-step not used in England?…It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army”. That’s a sobering observation and it bring me back to Mr Trump’s military parade.  There will be no—officially, we think—such ar march but Mr Trump is leading America into a phase in which it will dare not laugh at the army or  himself, though laughable it was

smoke-filled room (12. 526)

Coined by journalist Raymond Clapper and the Associated Press reporting on the selection process, leaders of the US Republican party gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel, considered one of the finest and most exclusive luxury accommodations of Chicago, host to numerous presidents during the twentieth century, to reach a consensus on whom their nominee would be. This secretive conclave of GOP power-brokers chose a compromise candidate in junior senator from Ohio, Warren G Harding (previously here and here) after several non-conclusive rounds of voting among delegates at the convention being held at the Coliseum across town. The fact that Harding had not been a serious contender prior to this private meeting confirmed in the minds of many that the American political machine was not truly representative and inscrutable, like the concept of the star chamber, and the phrase became shorthand for the murky, hazy inner workings.

synchronoptica

one year ago: constant entertainment (with synchronoptica) plus solving Zeno’s paradoxes

seven years ago: white-washing white supremacy, assorted links worth the revisit plus a memorial to those lost to Hurricane Maria

eight years ago: segregated America 

nine years ago: an ugly colour for cigarette packaging, rethinking heath and hygiene plus the Playboy mansion sold

ten years ago: romancing Sparta plus the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks

qualis artifex pereo (12. 523)

After a failed attempt to the suppress the rebellion of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis when the governor Gauis Julius Vindex over the emperor’s tax policies, trying to enlist the aid of of the governor of Hispania Tarraonensis, Servius Sulpicius Galba backfired with the Iberian province declaring its opposition and joining the uprising, declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate and abandoned by the Praetorian Guard, Nero fled the capital—but not to seek sanctuary in one of the still loyal eastern regions of the Empire as planned after an open mutiny from his military escort, refusing to grant safe passage. Returning to the palace in the evening, Nero awoke at midnight to find his personal bodyguards had abandoned him. Having quoted Virgil’s line from the Aeneid earlier that day in response to his commanders’ disobedience—“Is it so dreadful a thing then to die?,” calling for friend or foe to put him out his suffering but none came forward and then intimated that he would hurl himself in the Tiber. Theatrics failing, Nero once again resolved to leave the city on this day in 68 AD to have a place to reflect in quiet and his confidant Phaon, an imperial freedman, offered up his private villa in the suburbs, with the emperor making his way their with a retinue loyal emancipated servants, including a Greek slave boy called Sporus, whom Nero had castrated and subsequently married the year before whilst touring the region and had taken a liking for a remarkable resemblance to his recently departed wife, Poppaea Sabina who had died either in childbirth or due to a physical assault by Nero, dressing him as befitting an empress. Once at the villa, he ordered his companions to begin digging his grave and he paced back and forth to prepare for his suicide, muttering to himself the title, “What an artist the world is losing.” Unable to steel his nerves, Nero asked his friends to set an example by killing themselves first, but upon hearing approaching horsemen, he knew he had to face the end, forcing his private secretary to do the deed. The arriving senatorial guards tried to save Nero’s life, prescient of the chaos that would follow with the civil wars and Year of the Four Emperors, but were unsuccessful. Nero’s final words were from ibīdem, “Too late! This is fidelity!”

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI refuses to answer who won the 2020 US presidential election (with synchronoptica) plus terminal text effects

seven years ago: Trump leaves the G7 early, accusing partners of unfair trade practises  

eight years ago: former FBI director’s public testimony plus UK calls snap elections to reinforce Brexit mandate

nine years ago: the last of the time-carriers of London plus new chemical elements named

ten years ago: paternoster elevators, divine handiworks plus seeing the pasternoster lifts in operation

gitlow v new york (12. 519)

Whilst ultimately narrowly upholding the conviction of Socialist politician and journalist Benjamin Gitlow for the publication of his manifesto that called for the violent overthrow of the American government under New York’s criminal anarchy law, the landmark case decided this day in 1925 by the US supreme court, headed by chief justice William Taft, significantly affirmed that amendment XIV did extend the First Amendment’s provisions (through the due process clause) protecting freedom of speech and the press from to the constituent states and their governments were bound to respect these fundamental liberties.

One of the first major cases involving the Bill of Rights, it defined the scope of the guarantees and defined the standard to which a state’s or the federal government would be held should it try to criminalise or suppress publication or distribution. While most of the justices agreed that calling for an unlawful coup exceeded the limits of free speech, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr dissented, saying that governments should only be permitted to do so under the clear and present danger test and that indefinite advocacy is not the same thing as conscription and subversive action. Gitlow’s case was the first brought to the supreme court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Gitlow was represented by renown defence attorney Clarence Darrow and the ruling has been cited in numerous later judgements as precedent.   

 

synchronoptica 

one year ago: a visit to Ellertshäusen See (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the G7 in Quebec plus Project Maven

eight years ago: Trump motels plus J Edgar Hoover tried to convince Disney to produce Christian cartoons

nine years ago: plebiscites, the Bilderberg in Dresden, wage distribution in filmmaking, crimes of the art plus reflecting on y2k

ten years ago: the Pope defends science,  Big Pharma, assorted links to revisit plus the Hobo Museum of Britt Iowa

hohenwartetalsperre ii (12. 496)

While we’ve undoubtedly both been off for Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt, forty days after Easter) and knew about the conflation and coopting of the public holiday as Vatertag, Herrentag or Männertag to disassociate it from religious overtones especially in atheist East Germany with a emphasis on partying and taking a nice long hike with a wagon-load of beer (without the family members in tow), we had never really witnessed the celebrations en mass.

We wanted to go wandering along a narrow footpath above the shoreline to the next village of Linkenmühle, hosting a guesthouse and the only ferry in the state of Thuringia, which we made but the going was a bit uncomfortable with the added traffic of the holiday and inebriated men pulling carts. The gastronomy was very crowded but we enjoyed ourselves and decided to take the highroad back via a logging path over the mountain.

It was a steep climb and with a field blackberry (Brombeer) brambles that we needed to carry the dogs over due to the thorns of but worth it for the views and very much to ourselves. We came to an establishment called Ziegenhof—a working goat farm—with caprine-based refreshments, including goat-milk ice cream and a variety of cheeses—on the way back down to the campsite.

Through the night, several party barges were launched—we could hear the music as they passed, familiar Schlager song mostly but a few new to me, like this rendition Wir haben Grund zum Feiern (We have a Reason to Party to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”—see also) from the dock for a tour of the reservoir.

synchronoptica

one year ago: laundry lessons from Japan (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth the revisit plus a post-war postscript from Thomas Mann

seven years ago: Native Americans granted citizenship 

ten years ago: the founding of Leipzig, more links to enjoy plus acceptable facial hair for Norwegian sailors

twelve years ago: furloughing federal workers  

thirteen years ago: Germans and joy plus counterfeit wine

sara-la-kâli (12. 485)

Venerated on this day in folk Catholic traditions, sharing it with her companion and co-worker St Joanna though not officially recognised by the Church, as the patron protectress of the Romani people, particularly in the Camargue region of southern France with her shrine in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer considered a place of pilgrimage, St Sarah, according to legend, was a servant of the Three Marys, a maid of Mary of Clopas (sister-in-law of Joseph) from descendants from the coastal area of Malabar and brought to Egypt through Indo-Roman trade, where they landed after the Resurrection fleeing persecution and to work as missionaries to the continent. “Sarah the Black”—Romani Sara e Kali, she shares her name with the Hindu goddess worshipped in the northern part of India where the Romani originate. This religious syncretism is unique in Europe, though many pagan customs were adopted by Christianity, and on her feast, her statue is taken to the sea for a ritual bath with the ceremony paralleling worship of Kali and solemn ablutions.

heidelberger spargelessen (12. 474)

The culmination of tense relations between traditional collegiate fraternities and members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (with its student league, NSDStB), the series of public demonstrations began on this day in 1935 at the University of Heidelberg directed against the leadership of Adolf Hitler. While many student groups had expressed views aligned with Nazi ideals and outlook, many university associations were targeted as elitist and counter-revolutionary, their self-administration and hierarchy (see also) as contrary to the Führer principle of Gleichschaltung. The rally began when members of the Corps Saxo-Borussia gathered at a local student pub, Seppl, to heckle a radio re-broadcast of Hitler’s “Friedensrede” (Peace Speech, stating that they only sought to build up marine forces to the level of thirty-five percent of that of British naval tonnage). Though excused for their riotous behaviour after an apology, the same fraternity, emboldened by being let off easy and press coverage, the same fraternity provoked patrons further with harsher criticisms during an asparagus dinner at the guesthouse Hirschgasse (a popular hangout), and saw their organisation immediately banned with members subject to expulsion and senior leaders arrested. Portrayed as reactionary and bourgeois, fraternities were dissolved later in the summer and reformation outlawed.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: countries shifting to fare-free mass transit, inherited learning, graphic designer Reagan Ray, artist Josef Albers plus the movie posters of Bill Gold

eight years ago: DC’s boundary stones, drone photography, superlative new species plus scientist Clair Cameron Patterson

nine years ago: a class-action lawsuit against the Devil, Venice of the North, shock graphics for cigarette packs plus a visit to Glastonbury

ten years ago: more links to enjoy

10x10 (12. 449)

shooting the messager: the AP reporter fired and blacklisted for scooping the story of Nazi Germany’s surrender eight years ago—via Strange Company  

🚏: Shanghai metro lets riders design their own bus routes  

vision cantos: Denis Cooper on filmmaker Jud Yalkut—via { feuilleton }  

grave of the fireflies: Ze Frank (previously) on what’s happening with our bioluminescent friends  

the poyais scam: confidence tricker Gregor MacGregor’s con to lure investors in a fictional central American territory 

that’s why the apostrophe is single and not plural: the story of Anna Jarvis—the creator that later sued for the abolition of Mother’s Day 

flugsteighalle: a digital exhibition of Berlin’s monumental Tempelhof airport—previously—via das Kraftfuttermischwerk  

the madison avenue beat: a selection of vintage advertising jingles presented as a dance remix 

 corner of the city: street photographer Tong Ho Chung Howard’s most famous image captures the traditional tong lau (唐樓) architecture of Hong Kong, gradually being replaced by urban renewal programmes  

root causes: competing narratives for WWII Victory Day celebrations

tag der befreiung (12. 439)

Berlin, for the first time since reunification, observed a public holiday for this eightieth anniversary of VE Day with political leaders—pointedly excluding the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus—gathering in the Bundestag to commemorate liberation from Nazi dictatorship. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told guests assembled in the chamber that Germany must never downplay its burden of responsibility for the second world war and the Holocaust as the perpetrators that caused the Shoah and were unwilling or unable to resist the regime orchestrating these crimes against humanity. Steinmeier went on the acknowledge the role of the Red Army, comprised of Russians, Ukrainians and many others, in freeing Europe from the regime—but adds that the “liberators of Auschwitz have become the new aggressors,” rubbishing long-standing regional peace and security which stood as a sign of hope that we had retained some lessons from the past and revising and inverting the historical records—excusing his war of aggression as a fight against neo-Nazism—with imperial ambitions. That war casting a pall over solemnities that were otherwise celebrating the beginning of an unprecedented period of liberty and freedom, many others recognising the dire need for recommitting to the defence of democratic values and harmony.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Hard-Hat Riot of 1970 (with synchronoptica) plus locomotive music

seven years ago: a Prohibition Era Isle of Pleasure charted plus assorted links worth revisiting

eight years ago: HH Holmes’ murder castle, the French far-right, PC clones plus the cartographic trope of the land octopus

ten years ago: a utopian factory town plus an ingestible password 

eleven years ago: a self-massage technique called she-do

kriegsgräberstätte (12. 432)

Scheduled to be in Bonn for the G7 summit during the week of the fortieth anniversary of V-E Day celebrations, US president Ronald Reagan agreed, as a demonstration of the strength and steadfastness of West German-American relations—feeling he owed Helmut Kohl a photo-opportunity for the public and political backlash the chancellor suffered for conceding to host ballistic weapons—to visit a military cemetery logistically close to the joint airbase of Bitburg. Although planned months in advance, the ceremony intended to commemorate the end of hostilities and the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht to Allied Forces, the event was overshadowed by controversy once discovered that forty-nine of the two thousand German soldiers interred at the site at Kolmeshöhe were members of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel, drawing condemnation from Jewish activists and others worldwide. An impromptu and unscheduled visit to the memorial Bergen-Belsen was added to the itinerary to limit the leaders’ time at the cemetery, a stop which met with resistance by the president’s handlers as it might awaken old memories. The botched execution on both sides strained relations between the White House and the Chancellery, both sides blaming each other and not helped by Reagan’s statement equating those “drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis” suffered “just as surely as the victims of the victims of in the concentration camps.” In response, the Ramones recorded the single “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” in June of that year, the co-starring chimpanzee of “Bedtime for Bonzo” employed as an epithet for the former actor.

synchronoptica

one year ago: alien autopsy (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

eight years ago: a natural battery spanning a Norwegian valley, Valerian and the City of a 1000 Planets plus a clever and effective flyer

nine years ago: on tour in Cornwall 

ten years ago: The Meaning of Liff, more links to enjoy, populuxe design plus assorted trivia that sounds untrue

eleven years ago: fetishising fruit

pressroom (12. 429)

For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the launch of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (see previously), REM is releasing a remix of its classic track remastered by long time collaborator Garrett “Jacknife” Lee—renowned Irish music producer who has also worked with the Cars, U2, Weezer, Taylor Swift and others as a charity EP to benefit the defunded organisation’s reporting and outreach at a time when the work of public broadcasting is under assault and existential threat—see also. The call to action coinciding with World Press Freedom Day (previously), according to lore and liner notes, the 1981 song from the group that amicably disbanded in 2011 has nothing to do with the outlet—they just liked the title. “Decide yourself if radio’s gonna stay.”  More from Nag on the Lake at the link up top.

push-pin studios (12. 406)

Print Magazine’s Daily Heller invites us back to The Peculiar Manicule (see previously) to peruse through the curated collections of semi-retired graphic designer David Day’s mod and Day-Glo-adjacent artefacts and ephemera, particularly the series of psychedelic calendars produced by the Hallmark greeting card company in the 1960s—under the influence of illustrator R Crumb—growing chronologically more abstract and subversive as the months and years passed until the aesthetic, parallel with Mid-Century Modern, changed and an unexpected part of the company’s portfolio. Much more at the links above.

life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all (12. 379)

First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on this day in 1925, the Jazz Age novel by writer F Scott Fitzgerald, although well-received initially by critics, many felt it fell short of his earlier works, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned and was commercially a disappointment, and the fact it is one of the most widely-read texts by American high school students and that there was occasion to mark the anniversary would have elicited surprise for the author, whom also considered considered his literary career to be a failure. Reevaluation over the ensuing decades count it among the masterpieces of the early twentieth century, attracting scholarly attention over his questions of social class, environmental conservation, gender, race and disillusionment with the American Dream, aspirations and refinements that speak across the years. The story about careless people is in part based on lived experience with Fitzgerald’s infatuation with a socialite out of his league, raucous parties and a sensationalised true crime story involving a love-triangle in New Jersey. Completing the manuscript whilst staying in the French Riviera, Fitzgerald shopped around for publishers, reworking the draft several times and with working-titles Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, On the Road to West Egg, Under the Red, White and Blue and The Gold-Hatted Gatsby before reluctantly settling on the alliterative one in deference to Alai-Fournier’s singular tragic character Le Grand Meaulnes (often rendered for English readers as The Wanderer). The dust jacket artwork for the first edition is Spanish painter Francisco Cugat’s Celestial Eyes, an abstract representation of a flapper suspended above a fun-fair evoking New York’s Coney Island, the commission being presented to Fitzgerald before the novel was finished and becoming a motif in the story, prompting him to finalise the book before it went to another author’s work, maintaining an unusual correspondence between artist and author, whose original painting was rediscovered in the bin of the publishing house’s archives decades later like so many unsold volumes of The Great Gatsby’s first run.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Dune: The Musical (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: spirit animals and animal spirits, double-storey letters, floating dorms in Denmark plus assorted links to enjoy

eight years ago: sacrificial soda plus disinformation mills

nine years ago: a Canadian foothold in the Caribbean plus money laundering and the Panama Papers

ten years ago: more links to revisit plus an appreciation of Designing Women

berufsbeamtengesetz (12. 372)

The full formal title in English having a familiar ring, The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was enacted on this day in 1933 two months after Hitler’s rise to power is among the earliest examples of racist and anti-Semitic legislation in the regime, the main thrust of decree was to establish and promote a “national” and expert administrative state by dismissing certain groups of tenured employees, compelling those with Jewish or “non-Aryan” origins to retire or resign and terminating members with ties, real or suspected, to the Communist Party and affiliate organisations. Forbidding these individuals from holding teaching positions or judgeships at first before being expanded to a range of jobs including lawyers, tax consultants, doctors and notaries public, the law and harsh conditions spurred many to flee the country before being expelled, due to heritage or political beliefs. While briefly offering functionaries who had been employed since 1918 and had not yet attained the training and skills to faithfully execute their office should be let go, the text in the main concerned itself with presenting a false narrative of races and how to gauge non-Aranan descent and putting the onus of proof on individuals wanting to keep their positions—Arienachweis, Ahnenpass. Civil servants could be made redundant without cause and forced into retirement to advance the “simplification of administration” with vacancies eliminated. Pensions for this dismissed class of employees were also eventually phased out.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Italian cafe culture accoutrements (with synchronoptica), pixelated dioramas,  assorted links worth the revisit plus a banger from Rick James

seven years ago: the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930

eight years ago: unmasking Trump critics plus more links to enjoy

nine years ago: a sonnet generating algorithm, more on the Panama Papers and other tax havens plus a German comedian fined for insulting Turkish leadership

ten years ago: criminal mastermind Adam Worth, a double dose of assorted links, grocery shopping without packaging plus Cyprus joins the eurozone

first contact (12. 367)

Observed on this day to celebrate both the flight of the Phoenix (repurposed from a nuclear warhead at a US Air Force missile complex outside of Bozeman, Montana) that broke the light-speed barrier and attracted the attention of a passing Vulcan survey ship, the T’Plana-Hath, with its warp-signature—and immediately following the test-launch humanity’s first encounter with an alien race. The 2063 event was introduced as a holiday in 2021 during the COVID pandemic a virtual pick-me-up during lockdown and social-distancing but was established in franchise canon outside of the feature film with the crew of the Next Generation thwarting sabotage by the Borg and preserving the timeline—Geordi and Riker need to go further back in the past to fix our timeline—and Voyager marking the occasion from the Delta Quadrant with Naomi Wildman and Neelix hosting a gathering (see also) for the three hundred fifteenth anniversary with a party and rock-and-roll music (pilot Zefram Cochrane’s favourites) from Tom Paris’ antique jukebox. Science officer Tuvok delivered the salutation, reluctantly not seeing the point, of “Live long and prosper,” to the applause of the guests. A decade after First Contact, during the dedication of Earth’s first Warp 5 complex, Cochrane—who was initially motivated to create the warp drive for ‘women and money’—addressed the crowd: “Don’t try tp be a great man, just be a man, and let history make its own judgments,” it never being clear it the later retcon whether the test-flight was successful due to the intervention of the Enterprise and the Borg attempt to prevent it, and “This engine will let us go boldly where no man has gone before.” Ooby dooby.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Carrie at fifty-plus (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: another hit from Melanie, Lustron steel homes plus the Pillars of Creation

eight years ago: optical character recognition, amending the US constitution plus the news is fake but the leaks are real

nine years ago: the Panama Papers, Star Trek inspired cosmetics, manhole apartments, a gallery of Mid-Century Modern homes plus David Bowie as Abraham Lincoln

ten years ago: Easter greetings

9x9 (12.357)

gondor assault small group: a poem for the first of April  

unitedhealthcare: US attorney Pam Boni general will seek the death penalty in the slaying of company CEO  

yield my time: Senator Cory Booker’s speech on the chamber floor at eighteen hours and counting 

dataviz: an infographic challenge round to recreate the WEB Du Bois economic and demographic charts as presented during the 1900 Paris Exposition using modern tools—via Quantum of Sollazo  

nearby jobs: Chinese omni-app points flexible users to local gig opportunities and side-quests—shake it ’til you make it 

unabhängigkeitserklärung: from Der Zeit, Europe frees itself from American hegemony but starving their attention—via Kottke  

wyld stallyns: texting conversation demonstrates that we’re in the wrong timeline  

mora, negare, deponere: archaeologists uncover fresco foretelling the coming of Saint Luigi 

 i scorn the morn: ‘conjugated nouns’ by linguist Arnold M Zwicky

mercury-redstone booster development (12. 333)

On this day in 1961, the rocket prototype built in Alabama under the guidance of Wernher von Braun (previously) was launched from Cape Canaveral for one final test-flight to certify its safety and fitness for human transport—using a dummy as the occupant as with concurrent Soviet trials. The rocket reached an altitude of one hundred eight five kilometres in low Earth-orbit and was successfully salvaged in the Atlantic approximately eight minutes later. Alan Shepard had volunteered to fly himself but was strongly discouraged y von Braun because of the risk—had Shepard been allowed to go, he would have become the first human in outer space, instead of the second, Yuri Gagarin achieving that milestone less than three weeks later. 

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Breakfast Club (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting plus The Initiation of Sarah (1978)

seven years ago: quitting Facebook, the train from Pyongyang plus the March for Our Lives

eight years ago: ISPs allowed to sell browsing history plus Canadian schools cancel field trips to US over concerns of protecting students with immigrant backgrounds

nine years ago: The New Yorker mascot plus a quantum loophole in causality

ten years ago: more links to enjoy, fonts that promote recall and proofreading plus crusades against the unorthodox

joak (12. 330)

On this day in 1925, after a concerted government effort to subsidise the nascent technology following the successful, pioneering launch of KDKA in 1920 out of Pittsburgh, radio broadcasting began with the announcement of the above call letters for station identification from a studio Tokyo, a simulcast with transmitters in Osaka and Nagoya. The inaugural programme featured a live performance by the naval band and a recording of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. Early broadcast included educational lessons, coverage of baseball games and radio calisthenics—see previously.

reference epoch (12. 320)

Via Waxy, we are directed to a single-purpose website that untethers dates from the common era (which still is predicated on AD and BC) an makes time relative to whatever historical (or prehistorical) marker one wishes to use. In addition to showcased epoch events, there is also a simple script to install for one’s own project. 2025 is 7,5kAC—that is After Cheese.

snow recedes, mist lingers in the air (12. 303)

Courtesy of the always excellent Web Curios, we get a chance to revisit the topic of microseasons (候, kō) with this guide to the twenty-four solar terms or sekki, a phenomenal calendar in driven by the cycles of nature instead of fixed dates used traditionally for agrarian purposes in China and Japan, timing planting and harvesting. Harmonised nicely with yesterday’s lunar eclipse (see previously here and here), we are presently in Keichitsu or Jingzhe (啓蟄, the going-out of the worms) the days when insects awaken from their winter hiberation. Once I accidentally disturbed a nest of dormant lady bugs checking a barrel for rainwater and was devastated for days that I had interrupted their winter nap, still to this day. Even with the climate catastrophe and global weirding, there’s comfort in looking forward to Seimei (the first rainbows and geese migrate) and Shunbun (the sparrows return and the cherry blossoms bloom), the swallows come back to Capistrano and April showers.