night on bald mountain

Though we will be arriving a few days too late for the annual Hexentanz (Witches’ Dance) on the summit of Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz (EN/DE) Mountain range, H and I are really excited about getting away for a few days to explore that region. Wandering the trails in the primeval woods of one of the first, formally preserved nature-reserves in the world, inspired Goethe, Heine and Thomas Pynchon among others. There are churches and abbeys and villages from the Middle Ages and forsaken mines and waterways like the foundations of the Earth that are far more ancient. This blog will probably take a few days hiatus but you can follow all of our adventures on our little travel blog in the next few days.

who invited debbie downer or not merely dead but really, most sincerely dead

Though opinions usually only take a few seconds to cement, especially when already agreeable to one’s conscience, developments that 9-11 mastermind and reclusive Osama bin Laden has been assassinated by an American military team in a mansion in Pakistan take some time to digest. Though I would not want to veer toward the Teabag movement who’d surely not acknowledge that US president Obama could accomplish anything good until and unless a notarized copy of the death certificate is produced and I also wonder if these cryptic tracking devices uncovered embedded in some popular mobile device’s operating systems also mightn’t have hoisted bin Laden by his own petard (“This application would like to use your current location – Allow / Do not Allow”)—having moved on from dispatches via cassette tapes, timing and distraction are always factors that need to be considered.

Because the military-industrial complex and internal politics generally benefitted from having a boogey- man of semi-legendary stature who also conveniently made it acceptable to equate a religion with terrorism, I am disinclined to believe anything other than the opportunity presented itself and this ongoing hunt was concluded. There are many, however, who ascribe themselves to the opinion that the former president instigated the tragedies of nearly a decade past in order to boost his own flagging office and have a reasonable excuse to prosecute war. Given all the calamities that America faces, not least of which is its declining importance on the world stage, it does not seem outrageous that some side-show might be performed to boost the people’s spirits, especially with perpetual campaigning. In the heat of the moment, possibly the siege could not have had a different outcome, but I don’t understand all this blood-lust and surely in terms of obtaining useful insight and intelligence, it would have been better to have captured him alive. Although Saddam Hussein was taken prisoner, some claim that justice was carried out so swiftly precisely because he’d spill some awkward truths that his executioners rather not hear.

asymmetry or vim and vigour

Prognosticating on economic health is an activity that seems to lose its galloping gait, that or just descend into grizzled old prospector-junkyard-survivalist, when one is on the inside, looking out with some elements and on the outside, looking in with others. Having ones wage denominated in dollars (like commodities such as oil and gold) and working for a grasping tentacle, pseudopod, and living in an European framework, I see a lot of income lost in translation to euro from the weakened dollar.

There is also the sublimation of value from creeping inflation, food and fuel becoming dearer. These are shared realities, the deleveraged US market adverse to German exports and those things not made but managed by Americans and rise in costs that is spurred on by a supply deficit or disincentive to meet demand due to that same eroding dollar, but still hard to trace. Without assigning blame, just cause, this situation is the more difficult to understand, though the perspective gained is valuable, and demands that one be aware of macroeconomics and the diplomacy of money.

The other side of the picture, looking back on America and not its reflection or projection, is seemingly more transparent--though criticism is a cheap currency too. Maybe the assessment and attributions are unfair but the USA, crestfallen, is limning a caricature of itself and beneficent hegemony: lousy with bed-bugs, danger-prone, disparate, profligate, bankrupt, boorish, brutish, and maybe even yet not enough esteemed to pull others in its wake.  Gainsaying and guesswork are not so much fun when negotiating between these separate gauges of wellbeing.

lolly-pop guild or double-dog-dare

I wonder if tornados were in the science of the Land of Oz thought of as wormholes--not primative and primeval but a gateway as sophisticated and as exotic as a blackhole with transdimensional engineering. Such a romance of the twister or really even meteorological interest in their precise cause has not really seemed to have transpired. Having grown up a little in that so called "Tornado Alley" (which is a great huge swath of land--growing wider it seems, and not one lane reserved for tournaments at the Bowl-a-Rama, like the name suggests).
 It is rather a painful and frightening reality that one becomes weirdly numb to, and as I see that the storm system is making headlines and talk in Germany, it seems impossible to relate to someone who has not experienced it firsthand, the inchoate weather forecast, the sirens, facing it bravely--daring it almost--from one's front porch. The loss and destruction currently are unimaginable, and now I worry and believe that we have entere an age--and not just palavered by connectivity and profiteering, where all these tragedies are in long-form, when the affects of each catastrophe and disruption are understood and recorded, analyzed by those same palaverers, economically, risk-adverse and records ever to be broken. It is maybe also an age where such disasters are not uncommon and factored in, like sitting on the front porch and daring the winds.

chiaroscuro

There ought to be an international Make a Diorama day--or week, as well.  Holidays where one does not necessarily exchange cards or the pillage of some retail expedition would be excellent excuses to be creative, experiment, or just play. 

logos, gnomon and iconoclasts

 

Sometimes the calendar really gallops and juggling holidays and upcoming vacation and planning to optimize the time, and maybe what one needs for time management is a clever logo or symbol. Today marks another United Nations holiday in the annual cycle, World Graphic Design Day, on the anniversary of the founding of Icograda whose mission is to give a voice for all "visual communicators," professionals in the arts, marketing, education and general short-hand. I was thinking about a nice sun-dial icon with springtime elements, the shadow-casting gnomon whirling around--but I don't really have the talent for that without it turning into a mismatched, clip-art collage. Design is never something that should be taken for granted, but the bit about setting aside a day for it is a bit obtuse, like celebrating our three spatial dimensions. Breadth. If an organization can move signage and the like from the generic to the enriched and creative, however, that is a positive move, something that splinters originality and vision.

Logos can help solidify a commercial identity, like this Serrano-region ham consortium pork-chop "S" that I saw at breakfast. In general, however, I think icons and graphic arts are better vehicles for expressing processes, especially persuasive when rethinking the mundane, like this impressive series of workspace propaganda posters from Steve Thomas.

This day would be an excellent time to try one's hand at composition, message and short-hand with a poster or drawing--and even if it turns out to be a clip-art collage, imitating style and device helps build talent.