mnemosynum

A finding amongst a huge cache of artefacts uncovered during a construction project and on display more of less in situ at the Mithræum space (see also) of London, as the always brilliant Miss Cellania informs, suggest that proverbial lousy tee-shirt souvenir of today was present two millennia ago. Researchers have translated the inscription on an iron stylus used to make markings in wax-coated tablets as a sentiment to the effect for its recipient, “I went all the way to Rome, and all I got you was this pen.”

orbis terrarum

Always worth the visit for some artistic intervention, Hyperallergic directs our attention to a stunning atlas of greed and empire charted out by accomplished gazetteer Dan Mills. His paradoxically brilliant representations of rather bleak facts and figures on the displaced, over-burdened and contested really makes one face the uncomfortable topology that human ambition creates. We found especially poignant this familiar scramble for Antarctica whose claimants’ boundaries radiating out from the South Pole are constantly shifting (see also) not because of politics and sovereignty disputes but purely over melting ice. Much more to explore at the link up top.

clair obscur

Passing away this day in 1253 after enduring a long bout of illness that left her bedridden, Chiara Offreduccio of Assisi, inspired by the example of Saint Francis went on to found the Order of the Poor Clares, is honoured with a Feast Day. Centuries later, the media savvy Pope Pius XII the year after the publication of his 1957 encyclical Miranda Prorsus on motion pictures, radio and the media, declared that television be added to her patronage (goldsmithy, laundry-quartermasters, pleasant weather), expanding on one anecdote told of her devotion to church services and how even though confined to her room during her final days, she was still able to hear and watch the mass as it appeared on her wall.

deutsch-deutsch grenze

Temporarily cut off from the rest of Bavaria for several weeks now due to construction on the only road leading into our village from that direction and unable to travel west or south without taking a significant detour through Thüringen, I realise and appreciate that this is hardly a hardship—especially compared to what going west via routes eastward might have meant three decades ago in a partitioned Germany.

Along the way, we’ve been passing the sculpture park and memorial erected at a former border control point which we’ve previously visited but took the time to stop and take another look, in anticipation of the approaching anniversary of the border opening and reunification.

Several artists from the once divided region has contributed pieces, including these torii, steel figures and field of banners decorated by students.

 
A few kilometres further on, I took the chance to stop at a patrol tower from an earlier age but nonetheless was a more venerable and indelible mark on the countryside, the so-called Galgenturm, a watch station meant to provide early warning via a system of stations to the local ducal rulers in the case of the advance of marauding forces.  Reinforced from an earlier wooden structure in the fifteenth century, it was named in reference to the former gallows, last used for executions in the mid-seventeenth century, the twelve metre high tower provides a commanding view of the countryside and one could imagine the network of stations, turrets aflame, transmitting a distress-call.

vous êtes ici

Sometimes schedules and agendas don’t allow us time to factor in getting lost, wandering a bit and then that blue pulsating dot that seems to get might bossy when you stray off the path or you can’t orientate yourself to that “You are Here” marker on an information board and things get pretty aggravating.  Fortunately for those hopeless situations, a major way-finder (one that I’ve come to be rather fond of for foot and auto navigation) has added a augmented reality, live mode to its maps where you can show it your position and the application will use that to determine your exact coordinates and provide landmarks to get you on the right bearings to your destination. Read more at the link above.

small-arms trade

Depressingly we learn that one of America’s largest purveyors of firearms who tragically lost dozens of patrons and two store managers in a spree of massacres over the past week, remaining steadfast in its retail commitment to keep guns prominently and publicly available, has pledged make one reform in the wake of all the violence.
Unhelpfully parroting Trump’s false-narrative that mental illness or manipulative journalism is behind mass-shootings, the ubiquitous chain will take measures to take down signage and displays that promote video games that model violent and aggressive behaviour—no mention of its hunting assortment. Anyone who patronises these stores is morally bankrupt.

split-personality

Much like that paragon of wisdom and virtue whose reputation for sage judgment extended far beyond his kingdom yet his personal life was rather shambolic given to excess with little signs of succession-planning, we’re often better advisors for other than we are for ourselves, rarely able to follow our own dispensed advise—a phenomenon, the New Shelton Wet/Dry informs, termed Solomon’s Paradox.
Individuals are able to overcome this wilful blindness and bias through reason (not that it is an easy matter, nor that his solution to a custody dispute was particularly tenable), but a new virtual counselling paradigm that allows the subject to occupy two different virtual avatars, one being themselves as patient, and the other being Sigmund Freud, that encourages self-dialogue and a healthy distance might be not a short-cut but rather a segue that may provide helpful therapy for in some cases. Read more about this self-conversation experiment and how it was scripted and gauged at the link above.