gestalt

Campaigning sets off a dissonance that I think goes hidden, unexamined too quickly for both the presenter and for the audience. It is not the art of oration, in my opinion, to suggest and convince segments of the public that what they want to hear untangles half-truths and heated promises, nor does anything more than mask the compromise and confusion. Though we’d like to look away and turn inwards, sometimes it is necessary to try to reconcile what does not quite correspond with reality.

bunnicula, count duckula

Lore and superstition regarding vampirism, even preceding the imaginations of the writers they’ve inspired, sanction standard horror and a well-developed, though flexible, codex of rules governing the undead, but can also be keenly abstract in their beliefs.
Folklore of some populations in the Balkans, but surely anchored to a place, a patch of land as much as a particular people, created the overall apparition of the traditional vampire but also held the nightmare that inanimate objects, left out in the pall of the full moon, could become vampires. Certain fruits and vegetables were especially prone to being turned, especially melons, squashes and pumpkins still on the vine during this witching phase of the Moon. It is not clear if the vampire produce took on a changed appearance—nor caused much of a bother, other than rolling about and maybe lurching and bumping into things, but they were no longer fit to eat and needed to be ritually destroyed. The notion that gourds could harbour a malevolent, though paralyzed, force is pretty spooky, and there have been some creative and slightly goofy modern retellings. The idea of possession, a curse settling into a plant also made me think of that troupe of evangelizing vegetables from that children’s Christian television show. The practice of making a jack-o’-lantern out of a pumpkin comes from a completely separate string of traditions and folklore from the British Isles—originally, probably from a hollowed out turnip with the practical objective of making a torch whose flame was protected from the winds.

consider yourself part of the furniture

Before living in Germany, I had never heard the word Stammtisch, although the phenomenon and culture of a table for regulars, a salon-society, and a designated meeting point, a reserved spot, for networking and politicking, like the word, had been long since an established fixture of many societies. That term sounded very formal, like holding court, and maybe that made me seek out a less down-to-earth translation or equivalent. It comes under other names, too, of course, including the cracker-barrel or Coffee-Klatch, which surely has German origins too, and all the different words with differing connotations of hierarchical sophistication. Cafes, guesthouses, inns (Gaststätte) and pubs usually distinguished the gathering point for their regulars with a special ceremonial ashtray or a table flag (Wimpel). Mostly the get-together has been sublimated in the form of a virtual presence, but in some places the tradition continues unbroken.

ingot audit or treu ounce

While the merest suggestion that all the gold reserves in Fort Knox might not be fully accounted for is dismissed as the anarchistic and rambling speculations of a Sanka drinking mountain woman, the same question posed by the German Schatzkammer, the competent authority for auditing such things as the nation’s some 3 400 tonnes of gold, seems to have drawn some serious, if not careful and apologetic attention.

Germany and other countries have some of their supplies held in case of emergencies at central banks and depositories around the world, in order to be able to more quickly liquidate their stocks in a foreign currency, should a crisis break out. Given advances in electronic commerce, the common currency of Europe and the shaky state of the economy in general, this arrangement does seem a little outmoded. Although assurances are issued annually, Germany also worries that its treasure might not be inventoried and guarded properly, if not loaned out from time to time, used as door stops or treated to a tea-party rather than quietly resting inert in the vaults. Unlike Fort Knox, with little trouble, the public can arrange tours and get a glimpse of the horde (it’s Germany’s that they get a peek of) in the deep cellars of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City, some fifteen levels below the street and beneath the waters Hudson Bay. I am sure it’s a safe place but perhaps the gold should be repatriated and not on permanent-loan.