korkenzieher or exonymy

I remember when I was little, I had a light and fluffy block of cork wood that I thought was a very rare and exotic thing as part of a larger collection of stones, fossils and pieces of petrified wood. It was eaten with wormholes, and I think I only tried once floating it in the bathtub. Such an unusual grove must have its origins with the Irish second-city of the same name, I was convinced.

Of course, since then I learned that the cork oak is mostly cultivated in Portugal and the city is derived from the Irish Corcaigh for marshland and that wine corks are mostly plastic or rubber anymore--which is nice to a certain extent since one need not be as practiced at uncorking a bottle because the rubber stopper is not brittle and won't break apart into the bottle, but we did notice this unsung and ingenious hybrid that has a bit of plastic as a catchment for a tradition, fragile cork. It's strange how exonyms and making aboriginal place names sensible to foreign ears--or those of settlers to natives--can result in some creative folk etymology. The German (and of course Germany for Deutschland is one of the more prevalent exonyms and an invention of Julius Caesar) town of Pforzheim, for instance, is called so as a reduction, simplification of the Roman designation of Porta Hercynia, gateway to the ancient pan-European forest that remains as the Black Forest (der Schwarzwald) into modern times. Even a place named something seemingly straightforward, like Schweinfurt, having evolved from Suinurde (maybe meaning "man's land" or "divided land", connotes nothing about a place where pigs can cross the Main river. Such backformations have surprising and triangulated origins.

flory and fitchy or cross moline

The adult daughter of our neighbor has recently returned home to care for her mother and seeing to the considerable undertaking of getting her mother's household in order. The upper suite of rooms are beginning to look more livable and lived-in, and one afternoon, what I first thought was a Saint Stephan's or Patriarchal Cross, appeared in the window--almost like it was taped on. Another neighbour though it was the same thing, although he said it looked like a Saint Andrew's--which actually is the x-shaped one. Later, I was assured it was a bathroom shelf--but I wondered if it might be a sort of scarecrow--something to ward off the heathens whose terrace is just off their house.

I thought the daughter certainly did not want to get in a Cross Battle royale with us. I knew of the variations on cruciform symbols and a little bit about their associated lore and meaning, but I always thought that that the holy magazine was more like an armoury, gruesome and violent, like a museum of archery or spears, and ultimately telling of how saints were posed when martyred. I had not beforehand really associated the different symbols with the language of heraldry, like floried and fitched, reduced to ornaments but originally describing a cross with staves and stakes that could be fixed in the ground. The colourful and exacting terminology of charges, seals and coats-of-arms (Wappen) is a constant and unchanging thing, because there was no means to visually communicate the right tinctures and proportions of how a symbol should look without faithfully reproducing it in the first place. It's funny how a casual and accidental arranging can impart the same sort of associations.

ghost run

Not only does Atlas Obscura deliver postcards from the world's curious and esoteric locales, they also have a pretty nifty blog, which is celebrating thirty-one days of Halloween by featuring its creepiest and most haunting places. It is ghoulish--especially the tales of catacombs that ring of urban legend and highlighting the other consecrated sites that have a reciprocal relationship, a ceded and imparted spell-binding, with their visitors--and certainly worth investigating for raising holiday spirits.

mainframe

I consider myself fortunate to be of an age where my first exposure to computers was mediated by film (War Games, Ferris Buhler, TRON) and then in the classroom and was not prejudiced with the idea that off-line, a computer was not much use or conditioned to necessarily conform questions and answers the way programmers wanted them phrased. I remember in grade school, in Mister K-'s computer science class sitting with others at a bank of Apple IIE computers, writing simple programs but learning that one can set the rules and parameters—and not just cosmetically. I was never a serious programmer but I did pursue that as a hobby later on, and later on I can remember being enamoured with the range of sound-effects (and the graphics) that Apple computers were capable of when we used them to publish a student newspaper and yearbooks in journalism class. In addition to the genius and accessibility that Steve Jobs (EN/DE) brought to the world, we owe a great debt of gratitude to his unwavering vision of an interface that is determined by the user, aesthetic and functional and serving up the intangibles of electronic-data in a way that allows people a coordinated creativity and to accessorize. I have never felt that an Apple’s full potential went unrealized, a victim of some systemic fault or jingoistic jargon that a non-native could ever hope to penetrate (not discounting the real and valuable contributions of other innovators)--and do feel a great compunction to become smarter, not for the sake of better navigation and to become more attuned with the computers, so that the next generation's convergent evolution has something to greet and not only strive to make a better extension, a wetsuit, a pseudopod that encourages more virtual living rather than participating in limning all landscapes. I want to thank the team that Jobs brought together for this vision and freedom and I feel confident that his inspiration will go on.

whack fol de turalura ladie, whack fol de turalureley

You can see Dublin City and the fine groves of Blarney,

The Baun, Boyne, and Liffey, and the lakes of Killarney,

You can ride on the tide o'er the broad Majestic Shannon,

You can sail round Loch Neagh and see storied Dungannon.

Will you come, will you, will you, will you come to the bower?

PfRC will be will be taking a short hiatus, while we take are engaged with adventures in one of our favourite destinations--Ireland.  In the past we have enjoyed exploring the Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry, seen the savage beauty of Connemara, and this time we will be traveling to County Cork to visit Bantry Bay and the Ring of Beara on the southernmost peninsula. 

I am very excited--and surely all the while narrate our doings to the tune of the Edmund Fitzgerald or some other forgiving Irish folk song--and be sure to check back with our little travel blog for updates. 

speakeasy or agent 99

Another criticism of the groups gathered in cities across the United States to protest the culture of kleptocracy and loss of meaningful government advocacy is that the 99th percentile is mostly represented by the technocrati, and not the working poor and families overcome by want. I think that is an unfair characterization and implies that computer geeks and more subversive hacktavists have the luxury and leisure to groan about the state of the economy. Despite all the barbs traded over whether or not this rally needs clearer direction and what is glaringly obvious or otherwise, this movement still needed a catalyst and broad support that's not the piggy-backing that will be ultimately levied against the protesters by critics. With the timing of legislation that would aggravate trade-sanctions and diminish US stature further, the protests will be blamed for frustrating the elusive recovery, whose main measure is jobs though productivity is rather lost in credit and liquidity and improved savings--now called hording. The high-visibility media will do all it can to disparage these growing protests as clashes accelerate into theatre and grand-distraction, but beyond awareness, I think these occupations will secure more protections for the average worker, regardless of background, that have gone all out of balance in favour of profit and gain at any other cost.

hashtags

While I do not believe that the American people are an apathetic lot, I do believe there has been an institutionalization of the mechanisms that rob people's appetite for protest and a general swath of demotivation.

That said, I do not want to lose hope for the sit-ins going on across the country (EN/DE)--although the same dismissive mechanisms are certainly a extinguishing factor. There has been violence, police brutality, kettling, and worse yet either total disregard by the media or a high moralizing tone: most reporting comes through the lens of British journalism whose civil unrest, in the eye of the public, went from student tuition rallies to rioting and destruction--though Britain's protesters are more experienced with kettling and entrapment, and those you do deign to notice these unwashed masses take a paternal tone. Calling the movement unfocussed and without specific demands, some commentators sigh with regret that such behaviour is unbecoming and does not seem like promising deportment for a generation struggling with unemployment and staying the course in higher education. Editors might as well throw in the over-sold dream of home ownership for all and just compound the frustrations of the organizers and occupiers: the problems are so big and systemic that anyone could intuit them, without further explanation. It is ironic that this has become more scolding about responsibility, when the apex of success in money-matters is portrayed by the cavalier day-trader who beats the trends and bets against his better interests and patience. No one is dissecting this short-fused punchline, and the protesters are not drop-outs but are rather trying to make the rules more inclusive.

oneness

A year ago, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Reunification of Germany (Tag der Deutsche Einheit, die Wende) local artists installed an exhibition in a nearby community. Unfortunately, we never got around to seeing the display last Autumn, but taking advantage of the empty roads during for what is for most a holiday afternoon, I took a round-about route home and happened on this Blue Gate framing a religious sculpture, the only piece remaining of the art work commissioned to commemorate German unity.

Like a Japanese torii, the blue glass structure is very striking against the field, and I believe symbolizes a passageway through the Wall (die Mauer) and the Bildstock, the religious waypost, inside, I think, represents the historical context of Germany that transcends division. I think it was pretty neat to find this just today, especially after taking time earlier to read up on the events of this day—how opinion was not as homogenous as remembered or portrayed: Britain under Thatcher and France under Mitterrand were opposed to reunification, and demanded at the very least a five year probationary period, the Soviets surprised everyone by allowing Germany to choose its own destiny with minimal interference, and Bush was laudatory (I think that was the only version I was privy to) but with the forceful proviso that Germany remain in NATO, even though an overwhelming majority of Germans saw the reunification as the chance for further demilitarization and to claim neutrality. The course of human events is not usually an affair to be compartmentalized and the spoils of history admit to interpretation, like the art that captures a glimpse of it.