Our journey homeward took an unexpected but pleasant turn through the Chartreuse Mountains near Grenoble, that lends its name to the monastic order of the Carthusians (Kartause, originally the Order of Saint Bruno of Kรถln), who are renown for their eponymous liqueur. It would have been short-shrift to visit without adequate time or preparation but we did get a bottle to sample later and are excited about seeing the region properly, next time.
Tuesday 22 October 2013
charter house, road house
salve regina
A great many places have churches and shires similarly dedicated to Our Lady but I was surprised to find it is not all that uncommon in the Provence to find sites not decorated with spires and steeples but an actual, sometimes colossal figure of Mary (absent from the most noted examples), like these dominating structures in Nyons in the Drรดme, the courtyard of the Papal Palace (the so-called Babylonian Captivity) that transported the seat of popes and anti-popes from Rome to Avignon for a century during the late Middle Ages, or this presiding church on this high natural rocky pillar watching over the Verdon valley in Castellane.
Sometimes these glorious statutes were later additions and certainly not all buildings of worship (even those with the same devotionals) have the personification, so I wonder if there is some impetus, the recollection of a forgotten apparition, a sighting, or a particular miracle behind this statuary.
Thursday 10 October 2013
aus dessus des vieux volcans or le grand bleu
Wednesday 9 October 2013
federalist papers or pensions and bounties
Here is a very interesting and engrossing read regarding the imminent debt-ceiling hanging over the US economy and reputation through the lens of legal opining and historical context from economist Bruce Bartlett.
Tuesday 8 October 2013
if you want the thrill of love, i've been through the mill of love
catagories: food and drink, lifestyle, religion
dowager or could you borrow me a dime?
Fiat currency, money, is in essence debt—that is why it bears the instructions “legal tender for all debts public and private,” and the capacity for governments to print, conjure more money is a function of their ability to incur more debt.
Sunday 6 October 2013
rushmore syndrome
There is a name and rather long history, it seems, associated with the closure of popular and highly visible attractions and programmes in the midst of a budget crisis—whether or not the cordoning-off has anything to materially do with the financial issue at hand.
Like using teachers, soldiers, first responders or 9/11 as fodder for another volley, the so called Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore Syndrome has been invoked time and time again, by politicians of all stripes either to sugar-coat unpopular riders or to demonstrate that good civics cannot necessarily pick and choose cosier services to the exclusion of others. Such actions, however, are more than symbolic considering, despite the toolishness and visitors and caretakers affected and whose weariness and frustrations are mounting, that the cobbling together of concessions, without real compromise or earnest efforts to address the root of galloping and perennial problems, has gone on for years—absent a showdown or truce.
Saturday 5 October 2013
grundeinkommen oder tres BIEN
Swiss voters may get the chance to decide on a referendum later next month to extend a basic, living wage to all its adults, an allowance for all, regardless whether working or not. Supporters of the movement, called Generation Basic Income (part of the francophone campaign known Basic Income European Network, BIEN) has dumped and swept around some fifteen tonnes of five centime coins in square in front of the parliamentary building in Bern, eight million—one for every citizen of Switzerland, to call attention to their efforts.
The group does not want to make it an option, an incentive not to work (in fact limited trials in developing nations showed that the only demographic to work less was new parents, who could devote more time to childcare and teenagers who were able to focus more on education, and there was a significant increase in creative entrepreneurship) or supplant, replace welfare and other social safety-nets (though some advocates say the measures would if passed, allow for a smaller government as well), but rather to introduce some level of income equality that guarantees individuals the right to get-by—especially at times when household microeconomics are prone to threats from larger, more global events, and help stop the cycle of poverty that's usually passed down from generation to generation.
catagories: ๐จ๐ญ, ๐ฑ, labour, revolution