1up or der glückspilz

This vintage German New Year’s greeting card is just exuding good fortune with all the lucky paraphernalia featured, the greeter riding a pig jumping over a stand of mushrooms (Glückspilze) and armed with a horseshoe and four-leaved clovers. About the only talisman, at least in German traditions, not shown is a chimney sweep (Kaminkehrer). I am just as curious as to why this profession and not butcher, baker or candlestick maker is considered auspicious, but what strikes me first is how the chimney sweep comes bearing the same toadstool.  Deconstructing the symbols of luck is a bigger challenge than the turns and transpositions of holiday customs, and it is remarkable how many ways the inscrutable language of fortune infiltrates culture, yet remaining humble in its portrayal like this archetypal mushroom—everyone’s generic idea of what a mushroom should look like but having strange powers and a mysterious past. The Caterpillar from Alice’s adventures through the looking-glass holds court from such a tuffet, the Brothers Mario gain size and power from these bonuses, the Smurfs (les schtroumpfs, die Schlümpfe) lived in such mushroom houses—not to mention a staple in fairytales. A mushroom rendered in such a universally distinctive way can only be the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), a poisonous and unpredictably psychotropic fungus, which surely caused some fretful parents to condemn the Smurfs (and their underwater counterparts, the Snorks) as promoting drug use, like the same concerned group thought that the Care Bears were a satanic gateway organization, and although the mushroom grows anywhere that pine trees grow, it was considered highly dangerous to ingest (although most drugs I think are unpredictable) and there is only evidence in use in the far eastern reaches of Russia, restricted to the shaman caste or religious purposes.
I wonder how such an exclusive yet ubiquitous substance was translated to some universally hoped for but escapingly rare commodity as providence. It is strange what can develope in abject isolation.  It’s no explanation, but the luckiness of the chimney sweep, who introduced industrial cancer and labour reform to the world besides, seem to operate under a similar logic—a reminder that one’s hearth and home had not burnt down, due to a poorly maintained fireplace, but still representing a kind of forbidden and untouchable skill, like for those who live in psychedelic houses.

dancing merrily in the new, old-fashioned way

Seasonal salutations to all our readers. Many thanks for visiting, and now Gladys the Matron Angel there in the background will play a Christmas time polka on her accordion for you.  Carols, originally, were not just meant to be belted out by a choir but also had a rhythm and a beat that one dance to.  Any respectable troupe of carollers will have a dancing fool designated.

super saturation or bit torrent

I know people near and far are unfortunately dealing with more devastating flooding, but it does come as a rather dramatic and menacing change from speculation over a white Christmas to having our little stream threatening to spill over the streets. All the heavy snows from the past week are melting fast and producing more water than the rivers and tributaries can handle, and though this is not the first or worst we’ve seen of it, it generally came in late winter and never this early.

The outlying fields then become an expansive inland sea as there’s too much water to soak up and the town’s landscape is transformed by this shimmering, temporary reflecting pool and little torrents turn before spring begins, but it all seems to be coming to soon and too frequently. It is strange to see the tolerance for the tipping point, the range that buffered imbalance, grow more and more narrow.  Improving environmental practices is always challenging because it is not just changed behaviours (good climate karma that may still not be enough to turn the tide) locally, though much evidence and hardship is a local matter—where ever local is, that makes change but rather globally, in attitude and deed, that can lessen negative effects and allow nature to heal.

cliffhanger

Loggerheads, not develop- ments or discourse regardless of tone, concerning the state of the budget and forward-policy regarding taxation and funding for prosecuting wars of all ilk in the US is diabolical in the detail and shortfalls, and despite whether trailing or leading discussion and coverage of the issue, I suppose that these particulars do not matter overmuch nor ever survive the next cycle of austerity American-style.

A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ψευδοπόδια, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.