it looks like you could use a poem

Being a long time fan of Maria Popova’s engaging literary digest, Brain Pickings, I was pleasantly surprised when recently, instead of the usually lures to subscribe to the newsletter or otherwise to disrupt one’s taking leave of the place once it seemed like one’s attention was starting to slake, rather than being badgered (desperate though understandably so) into remaining, the gentle reader is offered an excerpt of poetry to consider and keep as a souvenir.

6x6

mixed media: Basa Funahara’s brilliant masking tape paintings

travelling matte: beautiful vintage postcards displayed on antique luggage

brightest london is best reached by underground: a look at some of the women artists who designed vintage Tube advertisements

a wave of whales: a campaign to inundate Japanese embassies worldwide with art and essays in opposition to their resumption of whaling

the rotten eggs: punk nursey rhymes that are your usual children’s musical fare

chime-in any time: Canadian radio observatory detects more mysterious repeating bursts 

it’s a gif to be simple, it’s a gif to be kind

Twisted Sifter treats to a small gallery of animations that elegantly and immediately illustrate how others might connect the same constellations of dots or interpret their relative motions in completely different and idiosyncratic ways. Though the specimen speaks for itself, there is also a couple nice articles linked at the source explaining what’s going on in terms bias and what’s called statistical underdetermination. Same otherwise.

showboat diplomacy

Keen to prop up and perpetuate its own fracking industry, the US ambassador to Germany (previously) issued threat of sanctions for domestic companies involved in and supporting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.
It is feared that Germany would become too dependent on Moscow and the importance of energy-transit countries, like Ukraine, would have less influence in the region. Existing infrastructure with cosmetic modifications to the pilot-lights can be made to heat homes with hydrogen, rather than drilled natural gas, so I suspect it’s all a last, desperate ploy to hold on to a baronet in the end, sort of like fracking above. The warning of the ambassador, whose been quoted in the media as supportive of “empowering” the ascendancy of right wing governments in Europe and of academies that are “safe-spaces” for fostering hateful, small-mindedness are regarded as rather toothless and the German business sector thanks the ambassador for the public interruption of reading his tweets out loud—delivered in his own voice, like the man who appointed him who happens to be currently under investigation for being a Russian asset.

daytrip: ohrdruf

H and I took a drive over the snowy Rennsteig (previously here and here) to visit Oberhof, the winter sports resort village but due to a ski biathlon happening this weekend, most the facilities weren’t accessible to the public and it was pretty crowded so we went on to explore the nearby small town of Ohrdruf—which turned out to be an astoundingly busy place. As an adolescent Johann Sebastian Bach resided there with his older brother Joh- Christoph who exposed him to organ music. From 1913 until 1916, bisque Kewpie dolls were made there and one can find moulds embedded in older façades—apparently but I failed to locate any—we’ll be back I’m sure.

Things get a bit bleak with the wars—a POW encampment on the edge of the city during World War I is converted into a concentration camp for World War II, though significantly, it was the first to be liberated by Allied forces and helped inform the wider world about the horrors carried out.
Shortly before that take-over, the original Wagon of Compiègne—the train carriage where the first and second Armistices were signed—was transported there from Berlin for safekeeping but was destroyed in an air raid. After the war, the site of the military training area was razed and command and control was assumed by the Soviet army until 1991, with their headquarters in the pictured baroque Schloß Ehrenstein. Afterwards, we went on to take a look at the nearby ruined Cistercian cloister complex Georgenthal. This structure with the impressive rosette window is from the twelfth century and originally was used as an infirmary before being transformed into a granary—presently used as a lapidarium, a place to exhibit monuments and architectural artefacts from the former abbey.