9x9 (11. 110)

tragedy of the commons: Tokelau’s country-code top level domain (see also) turned the tiny Pacific island into a virtual den of thievery—via Web Curios  

hanna-barbera educational division: a bizarre 1979 film-strip about getting home safe for latch-key kids featuring some ranger danger 

itinerant filmmaker: travelling from town to town, The Kidnappers Foil was a four-decade vanity project for local talent, produced hundreds of times over  

suspense accents: add the sound of drama to your day—via Things Magazine  

mixtape 2023: Cardhouse’s annual audio/visual revue

björn of the dead: Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson to play a starring role in an apocalyptic ABBA-tribute band horror movie—via Good Internet  

so red the nose, or, breath in the afternoon: an Oakland, California speakeasy bringing back drinks from 1930s—including Ernest Hemingway’s favoured Champagne cocktail  

merrie melodies: a snippet of the score for the cancelled Coyote v Acme—see more about the shelved project 

legal autopilot: a neural network negotiated and finalised a contract—an NDA—without human intervention

dschungelweg (11. 042)

Deciding to try again to find the route we were searching for yesterday but from a better trodden starting point and walked through the vineyards on another educational trail (Lehrpfad) that this time had information about the different varieties of grapes grown and harvested here with more views of Escherndorf, Nordheim and the Main valley, passing the Vogelsberg and the orchards on the other side of the Weinberg. 

We entered an ancient old-growth stretch of woods hugging the bank of the river, untouched except for a very narrow footpath through the forest. Passing Fahr and back up to the top of the ridge through a second nature path for some more views of the valleys and vineyards before returning to the campground. 

 

synchronoptica

 

one year ago:  absinthe banned in Switzerland, the Feast of Sergius and Bacchus plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: a cool ghoul and your ghost host, the Cyrus Charter, a bird wife plus a catalogue of invasive toys

 

three years ago: most senior US government officials in quarantine,  a typing tutor, a birdhouse apartment plus more historic maps

 

four years ago: a minimum wage machine

 

five years ago: more links to check out, East Germany’s Tag der Republik, a visit to an automotive and aviation museum plus himpathy and related neologism

mainschleife (11. 040)

Driving around a bit for provision, we stopped at a rather uniquely outfitted supermarket on the outskirts of Volkach. Whilst this chain’s affiliates are family-run and there’s a degree of individual decor—like the franchise at home that has a rather offensive figurine of a banana boat loader standing proud over the produce section dating from a time when this kind of caricature was more tolerated—but this style of decoration was decidedly strange, like it inherited the stock of a Bed, Bath & Beyond with throw pillows piled high at every aisle and fixed to the walls and a bank of music boxes that one could attach I guess to one’s trolley and randomly placed oversized plush llamas. 

Along the way we visited the well-conserved village of Prichsenstadt, a walled settlement virtually unchanged since the fourteenth century, earning the Altstadt the moniker “the Rothenburg of Lower Franconia.” Local lore tells of a legend of a figure marauding in the woods called the He He, basically a headless horseman (see also) that sometimes took the form of a monstrous black dog.  

Returning to Escherndorf after finding our route for a hike fenced in by a flock of grazing sheep at the other ferry crossing the Main at Fahr, we stopped at a Winzer to get a case of local Silvaner we had sampled the night before. The purveyor manning the shop seemed to have sampled a bit too much also as when completing the transaction, dropped his eyeglasses and trying to retrieve them, slipped off his chair and faceplanted into the floor. Gotten his lumps from the local varietal called Lump, the man was uninjured but a bit embarrassed and terribly apologetic but it was an understandable occupational hazard, H later recognised him for the He He with detachable head.

 

synchronoptica

 

one year ago: more research in the paranormal plus a 1975 McDonaldland mascot specification manual

two years ago: more streamlined designs,  a unique underpass plus a beloved Soviet cartoon character

 

three years ago: Trump emerges recovered from COVID, fascist nihilism, assorted links to revisit plus the first exoplanet confirmed (1995)

four years ago: German-American Day

 

five years ago: more fascist nihilism plus Carter debates Ford (1976)

days of wine and quinces (11. 039)

From the campground in Escherndorf, we took the dog on an extended hike up through the vineyards to the Vogelsberg perched atop the Weinberg. A thirteenth century monastery built on the foundations of a much older Celtic fortification (Burgstall), it was deconsecrated in favour of the neighbouring Carthusian chapterhouse in Astheim but has since been restored as an active religious community under the bishopric of Würzburg—which also assumed the wine production and includes a restaurant and guesthouse. 

After pausing for some lunch there, we continued down the other side of the hill along a path leading through a restorative nature project that alternated between rewilding and low maintenance orchards of cultivated through native and naturally occurring Quitten (quinces) of all sorts and information tables between groves about their history, culinary and medicinal significance. Tasting like a mix between an apple and a pear, the ancient, hardy fruit was rediscovered during post war rationing as a source of sugar and older recipes brought back in service for jellies, gin, wine, soap and a paste referred to as cheese. Sacred to Aphrodite , the signs also touched on the mythological references to quinces as binding symbols of oaths and probably the Golden Apple of Discord. In the evening we tried a pizza from a restaurant a ferry ride away made with the local produce of rosemary, honey, walnuts and not Quitten but rather pears on mozzarella that was a really superb flavour combination. 

 

synchronoptica

 

one year ago: the tarot of Austin Osman Spare, the world’s mass transit systems plus Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1996)

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Tubular Bells

 

three years ago: Civilisation comes to American audiences, Athens’ underground, the blessed Rosario Longo, a glass model of the coronavirus, IKEA’s back catalogue plus apologies in good standing

four years ago: late Thursdays in Germany, more links to check out plus more poetic graffiti

 

five years ago: an outstanding collection of vintage travel posters, legislating Scotland on maps plus more memorable fonts

7x7 (10. 939)

glas musterbuch: an unending catalogue of antique glassware 

bob hope presents the chrysler theatre: a star-studded television anthology airing from 1964 to 1967  

ziff-davis: more on CNET’s culling, content-pruning internal memo  

numa numa: Gary Brolsma recreates the viral dance video to the O-Zone song nineteen years later—via Waxy 

if you’re not paying, then you are the product: Zoom’s new terms of service agreement grants it perpetual rights over the contents of your meeting in exchange for turning it into an email with AI  

take two: slant board setting that allowed actors to rest in between shooting without getting out of costume

ti 5100: before the iPhone, calculators were regarded as aspiration personal electronics—see also

but my friends, they’re waiting in the lobby (10. 375)

Though no one can say quite sure why Dinner for One (previously), an eighteen minute British sketch from Lauri Wylie and starring comedians May Warden and Freddie Fronton recorded in 1962, has been made a Jahreswechsel broadcast and standard New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day television—perhaps owing to one of penultimate lines delivered by manservant James (posing as one of the no-show guests Mister Pommeroy) wishes Miss Sophie a Happy New Year, since New Year’s Eve 1972, it has been continuously aired, first by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk based in Hamburg, since attaining cult status with even Netflix producing a short remake of this obscure tradition with characters from their most popular series and a German film consortium planning a prequel mini-series—possibly a murder-mystery —for the end of 2023.

mcmlxxxix (10. 370)

By dint of the limited permutations of the Gregorian, civil calendar, we discover that we can helpfully recycle (see previously) our calendars from 2017 or 1989 for the upcoming 2023. Not to be dismissive of the events bookended six years ago, the political turning points of the latter with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Perestroika, the Velvet Revolution, the uprisings in Romania and China, as well as the gradual dismantling of the apartheid government in South Africa, the return of democratic norms to Brazil and Poland and the first internet service providers seem to bode as auspicious points of correspondence. Having lived through it, may we may live in exciting times. 

yulehole (10. 367)

Via Language Hat, we are referred to a love letter to obscure and superannuated words—like the above that refers to the slacker notch in one’s belt that might be necessitated by the attendant feasting that goes along with the Festive Season—from Guardian contributor and logophile Paul Anthony Jones who offers a selection of Christmas-related terms like boun—that is, to dress with evergreen boughs, the snowballing effect of rolling across a field to accrue size is a hogamadog (also the name of a nascent snail shell that matures into something substantial), bull week, the period preceding the holiday and a time to sort out the rest of one’s business and particularly the Tudor-era term for a hangover, a barleyhood.

8x8 (10. 220)

punto di ebollizione: pasta maker introduces ‘passive cooker’ meters 

capricorn one: a thoroughgoing review of a 1977 film about a faked Mars landing  

a shropshire lass: four decades of mushrooming in England and Wales  

friluftsliv: the term for the Danish tradition of unwinding in the wilds popularised by playwright Henrik Ibsen  

perfect for roquefort cheese: all about blue cheeses—see also  

yes sirah: origins and production of wine grape varietals around the globe—via tmn  

wormsign: building a functional Fremen thumper 

hasta la pasta: the Italian influence in Argentinian cuisine

la fin de la fée verte (10. 201)

The production or sale prohibited until the first of March of 2005, as a result of a referendum that took place in 1908, absinthe containing thujone, wormwood was banned in Switzerland on this day in 1910, prompted by a rather sensational murder that made headlines all over Europe and informed and heightened a moral panic associated with the drink. A heavy alcoholic named Jean Lanfray, a labourer who worked at a vineyard in the canton of Vaud, murdered his family in a drunken rage. Though Lanfray drank up to five litres of wine daily and as a lunch time refreshment on the day of the violent killings partook of seven glasses of wine, six cognacs, a brandy coffee, two crème de menthes, then two shots of absinthe as a digestif after a sandwich, vintners were hoping to shift the blame squarely on the latter.

she keeps her moët & chandon in a pretty cabinet (10. 035)

Though unclear if the attribution is entirely accurate as sparking did not become the dominant style of the wine region until the nineteenth century, this day in 1693 is the traditional date ascribed to the invention of Champagne by Benedictine monk and cellarer Dom Pierre Pérignon at the Abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers and our abbot can certainly be credited with innovating the techniques and practises of in bottle fermentation, which beforehand was an acute occupational hazard since if wine was bottled prematurely, they would become literal time-bombs liable to explosion due to an excess of carbon dioxide. Pérignon further championed purity in wine-making and prescribed a set of protocols for harvesting and crushing grapes. The popular quote of Pérignon’s first impression of drinking his Champagne— « Venez mes frères, je bois des étoiles » (“Come quickly my brothers, I am tasting the stars!”)—is also unfortunately a fin de siècle marketing myth meant to distance the drink’s associations with decadence and tie it to the diligence of a hard working monk.

good wine needs no bush

A shared image of a Japanese supermarket’s libations section seems at first to illicit a mangled, machined translation or poor command of English whereas this example is no case of Engrish to be  ridiculed but rather a pretty apt quotation from William Shakespeare in, recursively, the epilogue to As you Like It. With the term bush denoting the sprigs of a grapevine that symbolised a vintner’s shingle, the phrase meant that quality speaks for itself and does not need to be advertised—with the reference all but lost to English-speakers: delivered by Rosalind, “If it be true, that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true, that a good play needes no Epilogue.” The French equivalent, still in common-parlance, is à bon vin point d’enseigne or the German—not beating around the bush—gute Ware lobt sich selbst.

ut annare perannareque commode liceat

Originally corresponding to the first full moon of the New Year, this day, the Ides of March, was marked by the Feast of Anna Perenna, a public holiday with much feasting and sacrifice to secure a propitious and healthy year ahead. Revelers beseeched the deification of the passage of time to grant them as many more fruitful years as cups of wine they could imbibe and observed despite calendar reforms and the pivot away from lunar cycles. Associated with the assassination of Julius Caesar who ignored the warnings of a seer, a practitioner of haruspicy—that is divination through entrails—called Spurinna, the festivities changed and were formalized after the civil war as an imperial procession marking the end of a holy week of sorts in honour of the Cybele, the Magna Mater, and her consort Attis, who represented the cycle of the seasons, and passion plays (performed by tree-bearing priests called dendrophoroi) that marked the birth and death of that figure in anticipation of the vernal equinox.

pontypridd

Born this day in 1800 in Caerphilly, courtesy of Weird Universe, we learn about the singular figure of William Price (†1893), physician, Druid priest, vegetarian, marriage and organised religion contrarian and champagne enthusiast—would that we could stop with those epithets and skip nationalist and anti-vaxxer. Often seen donning an elaborate headdress of fox pelts, long hair and beard and emerald green onesie with incantations—or alternately stalk naked on his daily constitutional through the countryside, Price’s legacy includes the legalisation of cremation in Great Britain, previously against custom, when sadly his infant son, Iesu Grist—Welsh for Jesus Christ Price, died suddenly and Price burned his body on a pyre in accordance with Druidic traditions. Arrested for the unlawful disposal of a corpse, Price was however able to successfully plead his defence in court, leading to the passage of UK Cremation Act of 1902 and the establishment of crematoria throughout the country. Aged eighty-two, Price fathered a second son—also named Jesus (plus a daughter two years later called Penelopen) at which time he made detailed arrangements for the disposition of his estate and death, a funeral pyre a decade later attended by twenty-thousand mourners.

nobelfesten

Cancelled for a second year due to the pandemic, normally the Nobel Banquet (previously here and here) is held annually on this day (the anniversary of the death in 1896 of its benefactor, inspired to become a philanthropist after reading a premature obituary of himself that described him as a war profiteer, indeed having amassed his fortune from dynamite), the fête hosted in the Blue Hall of the rathaus of Stockholm for 1971 would have included amongst its guests Willy Brandt, chancellor of West Germany, Pavlo Neruda, Chilean poet and diplomat, Simon Kuznets, responsible for turning economics into an empirical, cyclical science, and Gábor Dénes, inventory of among other things holography.

forget-the-year

Though in practise perhaps a bit premature and ill-advised given the milieu of a resurgence in COVID cases, we did nonetheless enjoy augmenting our vocabulary with the Japanese tradition of bōnenkai (忘年会) office parties that take place usually during December sponsored by companies for their employees that involves banqueting and a lot of drinking. As respite from the pandemic and the lengthening past or otherwise, not everyone is ready to embrace mandated festivities and bureikō—無礼講, nomunication—that is, loosened tongues facilitated through drink, nomu 意味, which allows one to albeit temporarily, perhaps regrettably disregard hierarchy and distinctions in rank and seniority.

8x8

day-walker: monster lore invented by Hollywood—via Miss Cellania’s links 

tastes like pencil-shavings and heartbreak: niche Chicago liquor Jeppson’s Malört  

vermithrax pejorative: dress up as Galen (Peter McNicol) from Dragonslayer plus other obscure, vintage costumes—via Super Punch  

modelleisenbahn: real-time model railroading with Hamburg’s transit system—via Maps Mania 

hedge rider: an etymological celebration of wizards, witches, warlocks and more 

🕉: chanting, harmonised breathing and parasyphonic sounds  

mundane outfits: revisiting a tradition of dressing as highly specific yet relatable, everyday, social faux pas—an unfancy dress ball held in Japan and Taiwan 

the calls are coming from inside the building: a lampoon of the haunted house film trope

make it another old-fashioned please

We quite enjoyed this guided tour of the digitised holdings of the Wine and Spirits Museum of Île de Bendor in south France from Messy Messy Chic with a trans-Atlantic focus on the American invention—or convention rather of the cocktail in their extensive archive of vintage mixology guides from dating from the 1820s to the 1940s, richly illustrated and full to the brim with drinks and sometimes substitute ingredients that limn a certain slice of history.

There are volumes with celebrities’ favourites, menus of famous watering-holes, all gauged for home entertaining (perhaps for us scoff-laws), like the above and rather forlorn frontispiece from William C. Feery’s 1934 Wet Drinks…. for Dry People, which includes one called the Bee’s Knees, one part gin to one part honey, well-mixed and served over ice shavings. Each of the dazzling covers opens and lets one browse the recipes and other tips inside. Peruse these guides and let us know if you discover a new and intriguing favourite. Leave out the cherry, leave out the orange, leave out the bitters and just make it straight rye!

6x6

clink clink: a snappy little animated short of guests at cocktail hour 

samarkand: an East German couple’s tour of Uzbekistan fifty years ago with photography from 1971 and 2021  

expectation management: a comprehensive look into how the Delta variant changes the pandemic endgame—via Kottke  

noah’s violin: the twelve metre long wooden stringed instrument is a floating stage, inaugurated along with Project Moses to protect Venice from flooding  

the rural juror: a spoof streaming service (see also)—via JWZ  

the effect is shattering: a vodka advertising campaign that became a snow clone

bildersturm

Due to the above titled iconoclasm movement that left many Catholic churches bereft of their religious symbols and saintly relics from Protestant furore that sought to destroy what was regarded as idolatrous figures (see previously) during the Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Vatican ordered suitable replacements be found and promptly installed.

Thousands of skeletal remains were exhumed from the catacombs of Rome, lavishly dressed and decorated, like this day’s celebrant, Donatus of Münstereifel, reportedly a second century Roman soldier and martyr. Quickly rising through the ranks after enlisting, Donatus (sharing his feast day with several other liked-named saints) was part of the famed XXII. Legion—known as Fulminatrix, the thundering ones, and was assigned to the personal security detail of Marcus Aurelius (previously). Engaged in the Marcomannic Wars on the Danube march, the legion was outnumbered and nearly defeated until saved by a sudden storm that frightened off the Goths and Samaritans. Although the emperor wanted to credit his magician with summoning the storm, Donatus insisted it was his Christian prayer circle and gave thanks to God. The emperor had them all killed. Said to have been entombed in the Catacombs of Saint Agnes, Donatus’ remains were re-discovered by Pope Innocent X in 1646 and translated to the town on the Rhein near Bonn, acclaimed patron and protector from lightning strikes and invoked for a good grape harvest. Popular throughout the Rhineland as well as Donauland, Donatus also enjoyed a cultus in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Luxembourg, Slovakia and Austria.