(12. 806)

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Cin script (with synchronopitcæ), the British India Ocean Territory plus images of passengers going through a car-wash

fourteen years ago: art expositions of the Third Reich 

i like the city of san juan—i know a boat you can get on (12. 805)

Via our faithful chronicler, we are reminded that the cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim premiered on this day in 1961 (on the anniversary of the island’s takeover in 1898, ceded as part of the Treaty of Paris that settled the Spanish-American War) in New York City. The film from Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and Ernest Lehman (the team also behind The Sound of Music, Hello, Dolly! and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and starring Rita Moreno, Natalie Wood, George Chakiris and Richard Beymer was true to book, in turn inspired by the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, some numbers were re-ordered in appearance from the to better fit the narrative and lyrics changed to avoid censorship—particularly in “Jet Song” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” “sperm to worm” was changed to “from birth to earth”—and in the brilliantly mixed-metre song “America” (the alteration inspired by a supposed visit to Puerto Rico and the “Habanera,” L’amour est un oiseau rebelle from Carmen) for a message deemed too harsh on fellow citizens and instead emphasises more of the perks of living on the mainland, ignoring the fact that the criticism was directed at their mistreatment and unwelcome. The 2021 Steven Spielberg version includes the revolutionary anthem La Borinqueña and restores some of lines from the original. I’ll give them new washing machine! What have they got there to keep clean?

first instance, last resort (12. 804)

As promised in his campaign focused on retribution for his political critics and opponents, Trump’s weaponisation of the US justice system seems nearly complete with the most chilling headlines going to the recent string of indictments of former FBI director James Comey, New York attorney general Letitia James who led a fraud investigation against the president during the interregnum and most recently former national security adviser John Bolton for mishandling of classified material (the accusations admissions to the letter), we would be ill-disposed to not recognise the scope of the miscarriage of the law is not limited to personal attacks but is also manifest in the dismantling of the separation of powers among the coequal branches of the federal government in the recision and reprogramming of funds, cowing courts into submission to facilitate the illegal firings and shutterings of congressionally mandated agencies, and abusing the power of the pardon to rewrite the history of the January Sixth insurrection and attack on the US capitol and just now the commutation of the prison sentence of George Santos, disgraced New York Republican ejected from the House of Representatives by his own caucus.  The art deco sculpture to the left in the great hall of the Robert F Kennedy, Senior DOJ headquarters is the Spirit of Justice, infamously given a modesty smock in 2002 by then attorney general John Ashcroft to cover her exposed breast.  Her companion across the aisel, scantily clad in only a loin cloth, is called the Majesty of Justice.     

synchronoptica

one year ago: animated artefacts (with synchronopticæ) plus a collection of apotropaic plants 

fourteen years ago: swapping allegiances to shore up economies 

sixteen years ago: stoking the hearth 

crypt of civilisation (12. 803)

With the suggestion of the belief in reincarnation over hundreds of generations following the Platonic theory of metempsychosis with rebirth coming in thousand year cycles and setting the unsealing date six millennia in the future, calculated to be the difference from the height of Egyptian culture until the present, courtesy of Strange Company, we learn that the hermetically preserved installation (entombed in an unused swimming pool on campus)—inspired by the same contemporary craze of Tutmania (see previously here, here and here) and the notable dearth of information that the Ancients left for the Moderns—organised by history professor Thornwell Jacobs of Oglethorpe University in the American state of Georgia gave us the coinage time-capsule. Finally shunted away in 1935 after five years of careful, considered archiving and curation, the collection includes over eight hundred books, The Iliad, the Bible, a manuscript of Gone with the Wind among others, a seed vault, contemporary scientific instruments, cultural artefacts like Lincoln Logs, dental floss, fashions, an electric toaster, a radio—a windmill is also supplied to provide electricity to the appliances and equipment—as well as vocal recordings from Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and FDR with a hand-cranked device called the mutoscope for playback and teaching the eighty-second century openers of the crypt the English language. Designated to be unsealed in the year 8113 CE at noon US Eastern Time on Thursday 28 May, with the assumption being human beings (see also) are conducting the ceremony and a request that they respect and adopt this legacy for future generations.

sister cities (12. 802)

Via Web Curios, we discover a pretty keen interactive visualisation of the globe’s twinned towns (see previously here and here), though I’m given to understand not yet complete—in Iceland there are certainly vinabæir, though one can contribute to the underlying dataset and it’s not wholly intuitive at first how to navigate along the arc that links communities across nations and continents. The effect of zooming in through all those ascendant lines, especially in areas where the twinning is dense is quite impressive. Although this kind of relationship has existed throughout history through trade and cultural exchange, the first official twinning was a pact between municipal leaders of Toledo Ohio and Toledo Spain in 1931, with the idea gaining momentum towards the end of World War II to establish solidarity and promote reconciliation and understanding.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first private rocket company (with synchronopticæ), first presidential photo-op (1924) plus the Fool’s Cap Map

fourteen years ago: more travels in Ireland plus more on the Greek financial crisis