windrose or indian summer

There is nothing quite like the liminal sensation of having stumbled through and ruined the handiwork of an industrious and overly ambitious spider—both for the way it must make one look to others and for the temporary touch of these threads. Over the weekend, H and I were having a drink at an outdoor café.

A old woman sat at a table directly behind me, and she did not linger as long as we did in the sunny and breezy afternoon, and shortly before her departing, I started to feel the fleeting glance of impossibly thin filaments. In the moment, I became convinced that when my back was turned, this witch had slyly cast a webby spell on me.  I felt a bit unnerved that the feeling was not going away, and H told me, on the contrary, that this sort of weather—a burst of an Indian Summer as we would say in English, was called Altweibersommer in German. This name, however, did not refer to the age of woman and any cobwebs that she most assuredly was not dusting off, but rather to the errant filaments of spider-silk, which can appear like long grey hairs and are born in the wind at this time of year. The stray threads are the parachutes—hopefully the discarded lifelines—of the recently hatched young of the tiny bowl-and-doily spiders that carry the broods to all corners. I like the poetic Altweibersommer much better than the other term, which seems a bit morose and disappointed, alarmist and not with a hint of rebirth.

¡refrescante! or double-blind trial

While the usual battle-fields for the Cola Wars are found in public institutions, school cafeterias and workplace cantinas, the competition can involve sometimes much more than just syrup and air-canisters with a whole franchised realm, a vertical monopoly of loyal patrons behind the brand who would never dare sell the competing product.

There, however, is precious little more serious than one’s immortal soul—which are the stakes for tribe in Mexico, who’ve incorporated either one or the other big cola brands into their religious traditions. Convinced that belching helps to release evil spirits, members of the community are willing to pay 50¢ for a bottle of soda—which does not sound bad until one realises that that’s a day’s wage, to augment their purification rituals. Aside from the faithful forgoing food to support the marketing and distribution rivalry between billion-dollar multi-national corporations, there are also the matters of health, fair-labour and responsible water-usage at stake. Realising that they are the momentary playthings of globalism, some communities in Chiapas have boycotted the soft-drinks altogether—though both companies are pretty ruthless about re-establishing market-control.

it happened on the way to forum: syllabus

I sincerely hope I do not offend the historians and presenters from whom I have taken the torch in a glancing way by relating what I have heard in a poor and humble fashion but I am unapologetically eager to share whatever has piqued my curiosity to learn more and do hope that it is advancingly contagious for at least one person, like learning about the state of Roman public education. Of course, it was not universal basic education as we understand it but rather the stiflingly standardised curriculum that pervaded the Empire, echoed under the covered porches from Rome to Britannia, as tours in the provinces were always accompanied ones, and probably managed to instill a marked aversion to learning rather than producing a productive and literate populace.

Pedagogy was a mind-numbing affair of rote- memor- isation and recall, which systematically and unvaryingly divorced numbers, letters and even the limited canon of belle-lettres, the Iliad, the Odyssey, from their meaning—children instructed as copyists and sophists for the court. Even though the overwhelming majority could not afford such a luxury and the home-schooling paterfamilias mimicked the same uninspired method, the government deemed that—in the main—only imported Greek slaves, who interestingly made up the bulk of the educator-corps, could be entrusted as studious bureaucrats, with only a sliver of the citizenry in the Senate and the extended imperial family otherwise fit for governance. Aside from the mimicry of writing and reading only for the sake of grammar and sophistry, what was left out of standard education seems a gleaming omission—with no philosophy, arts, science, history or physical fitness (that was reserved to the ranks of soldiering) to speak of. Left with this model that was no better than what was available to their social betters, and with most being born into the caste of either farmer or fighter but endowed with the safety-net of a public dole of grain and wine, ensuring only a modicum of hardship and envy, the superstitions of that old-time religion endured for many.
 As the Roman pantheon became deluded with empty votive-offerings to a growing cult of Emperors and dependents and attendants, some began to turn to emergent prophets and charlatans for comfort and fulfillment, overseeing the rise of the membership of other groups, not necessarily aligned with Roman civic interests. The Roman educational system and it's inability to create the polity that it demanded probably affected on balance the departure of the old panoply and adoption of new religion, but I think that that was not the only factor for splinter factions. What do you think? Given how the same methods have been handed down through the eons and that there is still not much to capture the imagination of pupils, already recognising their caste, should not such inquiring and dissatisfaction be expected?

grenzübergangsstelle

H and I had the chance to revisit a preserved border control installation in between Thuringian Meiningen and Bavarian Mellrichstadt that we had last stopped at on one icy day almost seven years ago.
It was interesting to inspect the quiet grounds and reflect on how a highly militarised boundary had separated East and West Germany for forty-five years until just twenty-five years ago, and we are throttling towards that anniversary without an abundance of circumspection.
It seems so radically different but not in the escaping and forgotten past, either. Just beyond the patrol bunkers and the vehicle battering-ram and the layers of obstacles and hindrances, in the open plain there was a sculpture park dedicated to a message of unity and sacrifice and the insistent promise to never allow such a wedge to divide the country again.
The entire display, with aggrieved cast iron giants and stained-glass gates and figures amid a field of steel flags and banners was quite moving and powerful under the dramatic skies of a passing afternoon storm, which provided a vibrant backdrop. I am glad that we took the time to come back and explore this memorial that is really just around the corner and yet something distant.

it happened on the way to the forum: rebel alliance

Of course, there was no broad historical force opposing Rome but it make a pretty cool assembly of action figures of underdogs. Most saw their resistance ultimately crushed after being provoked into battle but a few did define the furthest reaches of the Empire and remained unconquered. One could collect the heroines—like Cleopatra who was the first Ptolemy to show more than passing regard for the Egyptians and tried to preserve the Republic in her own way, and Boudica, the warrior queen of the Britons, whose only transgression was in believing that the treaty with the Romans would remain in effect after her husband the king died and she assumed the throne—however, as the chauvinistic Romans did not recognise female inheritance, they merely annexed her kingdom. One could collect the Germans, like Arminius of Cherusci tribe (Hermann der Cherusker), who was held as a hostage during his youth and even received a Roman military education, and graduating with hounors never succumbed to the Stockholm Syndrome and returned to led his people against their occupiers and after orchestrating several demorialising defeat, the Romans never tried to advance beyond the Rhein again.

Decebalus, the last king of independent Dacia led three campaigns against the Romans as they tried to stabilise their borderlands to the north of Greece and on towards the banks of the Danube, no longer content to let some non-assimilated client kingdom to guard the frontier. There were those pesky Christians, led by the missionary Paul, Apostle to the Roman. Mithridates IV was a fearsome prince and general of Armenia and Anatolia who very nearly succeeded in keeping Rome out of Asia Minor altogether.

There is of course the old nemesis Hannibal, the Carthaginian military commander that seemed virtually unbeatable, and who in defeat cursed Rome with its visions of manifest destiny. And there is, among my favourites but certainly not an exhaustive list of personalities or portrayals, since the majority of source material—even for patriotic artists, come from victorious Roman accounts—the Welsh king Togodumnus who refused to pay tribute to Rome and had successfully driven them out until ambushed by his own men. Who else ought to be included? It could be a whole universe of players.

it happened on the way to the forum: post meridiem

Though it is still several weeks until Europe turns it clocks back to standard time, the days are already growing shorter and darkness comes earlier and earlier.
The time adjustment always just seems to exacerbate an already dwindling amount of daylight but it is far less complicated, I think, than the method the Ancient Romans. The day consisted of twenty-four hours (horæ), divided into two twelve hour periods each for night and day, but as the Romans were mostly unconcerned with the o'clock and really only observed the important transitions of dawn, noon and dusk (aurora, meridies—the sun being directly overhead and a bit different than the ninth hour of nona hora—and crepusculum), they managed the change of the seasons in a different fashion, adjusting the length of the hour, until achieving a maximum of a seventy-five minute long one on the Summer Solstice and the gradually drawing it down to the other tropic with a forty-five minute hour on the Winter Solstice, from the perspective of Rome.

This sort of timekeeping seems very complex and would not due for international timetables and coordination, but our modern ways, too focused on an artificial punctuality and being ruled by all these bells and chimes, would probably seem hopelessly vain to the Romans. As strange as the idea of longer and shorter hours might seem, this way of telling the time is preserved in many medieval clocktowers, including famously the Orloj, the Astronomical Clock of Prague, whose outer dial of Roman numerals shows the time in the conventional way but the golden lines radiating inward each represent one-twelfth of the day and these unequal hours wax or wane with the help of the cog of the second face to reflect the changes that come with the seasons.