nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero disunt oil

"Everyone has two countries, his or her own--and France," someone once said. PfRC is going on holiday to the Aquitaine, the pays d'òc. Traditionally, this area was one of the areas where Occitan (Provençal) was spoken. The Latin phrase in the title and language itself is from Dante's observation that for yes "some say òc (from Latin hoc--this), some say sì (from sicut--thus), and others oïl (from hoc illud--this is it)." Please stay-tuned to our little travel blog for regular updates and more adventures.

foundry sans informal

Though I hope I am not too much of a font snob or look down my nose too much at Comic Sans, but I do appreciate the attention to detail, aesthetic balance that goes into type-setting. Scribble (via Neatorama) has a nifty flow-chart and other guides to facilitate choosing the appropriate font. Personally, within the quiver of standard type-faces, Gill Sans is quite presentable. It's similar to the lettering the British Broadcasting Company uses and to the style of German traffic signage, DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung) 1451.

flea, fly, flea-fly-mosquito

Though I generally am little disappointed by the effort, I usually do read through the comments section after a news article. Beyond destructive criticism and roundly sharing blame and deeply personal affronts, there are sometimes interesting takes and tangents on the news.  And sometimes there is the serendipitously non sequitur, like dadaist graffiti.  After an article about the economic situation in America, there was a comment, ignored but weirdly trenchant--FACT: Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.  I thought that was priceless, and a lot more arresting than normal angry opinions-to-power.  FACT: Cats fly cranes. Cats. Cranes. Cook County Sheriff.

cosmic architektonik

This Spiegel (bedauerlich nur auf deutsch) gallery and review of by-gone communist architecture, alien like the shipwrecks of a failed space-invasion curated by photographer Roman Bezjak during a five year odyssey through East Europe, behind the former Iron Curtain, is fantastic grand tour of old out-of-this-world Soviet relics and structural design through the former East Germany, Tirana, Pristina, Bratislava, Tiflis and Prague.

These expressive images certainly convey more than the imposing, gray monstrosities that are usually conjured up when one thinks of such buildings. We have seen a bit of both: the industrial, utilitarian and the inspired and elevated, and I certainly would like to visit these places. One can peruse the complete journey in Bezjak's book "Socialist Modernism - Period Archeology," and would be perfect destinations for the intrepid trekkers from Atlas Obscura.

In a related collection, Spiegel also features evocative images of post-modern monuments to war and revolution mostly from the former Yugoslavia and Balkans that are surpassingly bizarre and theatrical. One can find out more about the artists' visions in Jan Kempenaers' collection, "Spomenik."