respektrente

The panel jury of the Society for the Germany Language (GfdS, Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache) in Wiesbaden has submitted its selection for Wort des Jahres (previously) with the above portmanteau that highlights the problem that many retirees face in old age of despite having contributed to a full pension all their careers, are not seeing the returns to fund their accustomed lifestyle. Rather than a universal basic income, legislators propose broadly means to supplement seniors at the end of one chapter of their working lives. Respektrente beat out Rollerchaos, another neologism, to describe the regrettable opening up the sidewalks to electric-scooters.

herrnhuter stern

We’re getting ready to hang up our Moravian stars as the first festoonery of the season and the process of constructing the lantern and piecing together the paper cones is always an engaging ritual.
The decoration and design originated in the 1830s in a Moravian church (see also) boarding school for boys near the town of Görlitz to impart students with a lesson in geometry—the twenty-six-sided star being called a rhombicuboctahedron. Around 1880, an alumnus of the Pædagogium made the stars and their instruction manuals for sale in his bookstore and his son went on to open a factory in 1897 in the village of Herrnhut under the auspices of the church that makes and distributes the stars to this day.

thumpety, thump, thump

Via Boing Boing, we are treated to a musical duet of Leon Redbone and Dr John performing “Frosty the Snowman” from the former’s 1988 holiday album Christmas Island. Both musicians passed away earlier this year within weeks of each other.  Redbone also voiced the Narrator Snowman (inspired by the Rankin and Bass characters) in the 2003 Christmas comedy Elf.

andreasnacht

The apostle opting to be crucified saltire to differentiate his martyrdom from that of Jesus and patron of Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Scotland, Romania, Barbados, Burgundy, miners (hence the crossed pick and hewer that symbolises the trade), fishmongers, pregnant women, rope-makers, butchers and singers—interceding on counts of sore throat and other respiratory distress and incidence of lycanthropy, this day and evening marks the Feast of Saint Andrew.
Brother of Peter and as fishermen become fishers of men, Andrew is referred to as Πρωτόκλητος, the First-Called, apostolic succession in the Orthodox tradition following him rather than his sibling (Andrew introduced Peter to Jesus), as it does in the Roman Catholic Church.  Syncretically recognised as the beginning of Advent and marking the end of pre-winter slaughter of livestock, before seasonal trappings overtook folk superstitions, this night was especially viewed as an ideal occasion for divination, carromancy—predicting the future by interpreting the form hot candle wax takes cooled in water (see also)—especially, and magic spells. Furthermore, it was believed that from this night until the eve of the Feast of Saint George, it was a particularly active time for vampires and werewolves, with the latter being granted the license to prey on whatever they choose and, natural or supernatural, the power to speak to humans on this night.

tovvangar

Our gratitude once again to Super Punch for directing our attention to a comprehensive and interactive lesson from the LA Times charting out the villages and sacred sites of the aboriginal people of the Los Angeles basin and Southern Channel Islands, the Tongva, who called their world, bound roughly by what today is called Palos Verdes to the San Fernando Valley. In addition to exploring a map with the metropolis overlaid with native settlements, there is a brief language primer that aims to reconstruct the tongue that became moribund in the early twentieth century but never went extinct, thanks to the culture that’s trying to revive it.

history is written by the victors

As a demonstration project to illustrate how potentially fraught our near-future and future historians might interpret our contemporary period and how self-assured we can be ourselves, a team under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology present In Event of Moon Disaster, Richard Nixon delivering his counter-factual contingency address prepared had something gone awry with the Apollo 11 lunar mission and the crew were irretrievably stranded on the Moon. Through technology might get better at debunking deepfakes and insulating us from the sound-bite struggle, human brains don’t have the bandwidth often to delve further into a story and uncover a true accounting.

peanuts gallery

Having had this top detail of a comic strip panel inhabiting my image archives for some time now and not really understanding where it was from, I appreciated having it put into context with this nice, grateful recollection of the eminent author and visit to a past exhibition that brought some insight to the interior (both mental and stylistic) of Charles M Schulz’ characters (see also) that particularly underscore questions of generational divides and how perspective is born of attention as much as intention.
One might not have paid much notice to backgrounds of comics (and cartoons) that contemporary eyes might label as sparse and minimalist but they were really couched in a MidCentury Modern sentiment that informed the entire aesthetic. Note the furnishings by Ray and Charles Eames and other iconic designers in the  panel (March 1953) to your right alone, which was faithfully recreated with actual artefacts of the age, and more will creep into focus next time you peruse the funny pages.