sister cities

It was a bit disheartening to learn, a few months ago, that some communities of the British Isles were formally severing ties, de-twaining themselves from twin towns and villages in continental Europe.
The relations, I suppose, had gone mostly inactive with cultural exchanges and engagements rarer and rarer and only with the guilt-inducing (or affirming) reminders on the city-limits sign. There was also the instigation that the ties were not only irrelevant but came out of a backlash against EU politicking and monetary policy. One remote Scots village in the Highlands, home to some three hundred residents, called Glenelg is bucking the trend, however, and embracing the notion of adopting a sister location. Those cartographers and explorers mapping out the Martian rover Curiosity’s route named a certain geological feature along the path, one which Curiosity will pass on its venture outward and again on its way back, after this settlement’s namesake in the Northwest Territories in Canada with a palindromical name. Residents are very proud of this distinction and are the first village to pair itself with an extraterrestrial locale.

boatswain

Another recent flea-market find was this bronze statuette, perhaps a trophy (Pokal), but determining anything further on it has proved quite a mystery. The vendor only knew that this very heavy bronze figure on a black marble base was from an artist in Hamburg. The piece is either dated or numbered on the fore of the boat with “19 | 94” and then inscribed with only a sideways, stylized W or E with two dots inside. The base looks like it might have once had a plaque attached to it—which is why I thought it might be some kind of prize. The inside of the boat that the tall man is standing in is etched like a leaf but otherwise cast like a small vessel. The ship’s wheel (Steuerrad) the man is handling is also an unusual detail. Do you have any guesses about this piece?

la serenissima

The UK daily the Telegraph is reporting on a secessionist movement and mass rally along the canals of the city of Venice, which may gain more traction at a quicker pace than other parallel calls for independence in Scotland from Great Britain and Catalonia from Spain.

United Italy already hosts the devolved Papal States as the Vatican, the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta and the Republic of San Marino (plus a few other aspirants) within its borders, and the maritime and mercantile empire of the doges only became annexed due to the barn-storming of Napoleon’s armies, like many other city-states and pocket-republics across the continent—with some notable allowances. The roots of this protest go back decades but economic instability and having to pay tribute to Rome may be the trigger that carries this popular movement. Reasserting lapsed boundaries, once the first province is freed, I think will cascade quite quickly and I don’t know how the map will look afterwards.

exposure latitude

Via the always outstanding Colossal, Flickrer Bastian Kalous shares some amazing and evocative photographs captured with a Polaroid instant camera. These images are imprinted with a certain heirloom palette on a canvas not often seen and the results are mysterious and hauntingly beautiful. His photo pool, which lies somewhere in an unexplored valley—not sinister but something with the compulsion and persistence of a last-known photograph—fortunately has several hundred of these chemical compositions to discover, ranging from his home by Passau in the Bavarian Forest to the Grand Canyon.

pageantry or deconstructing dumbo

Proctoring and participating in something established, like a formal debate, is confounded with expectations, necessarily anticipating that one defend and champion his causes over those of his opponent and the demands of the audience to see that conviction come, that overlay the chest puffing and stepping up to the challenge not only with the notion that a leader be unflinching but also polished, rehearsed and unhesitating.

Rhetoric and delivery are the vehicles of these matches, but they are only that—shiny and serviceable and not the chosen weapons in a duel or necessarily acquainted with civil negotiations outside this particular venue.

Rhetoric and delivery are also indicative of substance and style, and aside from keeping a tighter rein on the direction of talk, which was possibly a miscalculation and under- estimating but more likely a sign of exasperation for having to play to a farce or a baiting tactic that allows one’s adversary to dispatch and exhaust all the questions with prepared answers early on, thoughtfulness and circumspection seem indeed more befitting leadership. There was not an unwillingness to engage, as opposed to the true disdain and disregard revealed on the other side and pandering to an unallied demographic, but rather a weariness similar to being pressed to action by hateful stunts, where there’s also precious little chance for listening. Personally, I find it hard to believe—not having scrutinized the show play-by-play with the benefit of pundits and talking-heads, that anyone was much out of character, and proclaiming victory in these first rounds rings pretty hollow and is just a projection of bias and foregone conclusions. L’esprit d’escalier, staircase wit, thinking of better come-backs as one is walking away, maybe cannot redeem a supposedly bad night but the will to regroup and improve is certainly more withering in the long term. Perhaps, like the manifesto that’s based on math-magic and is malleable to the magical-thinking of the what the audience wants to hear, it was important to see that the challenger can perform, though over-exposure reveals the performance.

goldfinger

The latest installment of the quintessentially British institution, the James Bond films, is set for release on the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Sean Connery as Agent 007 in the adaptation of Ian Fleming’s espionage novel Dr. No.

The franchise, played by a Scotsman, Australians, an American and now a Briton, is unsinkably English but the line has endured because of the cosmopolitan sophistication that can ingratiate itself internationally. Much ceremony and patent looks go into the formula, and the breach or the relaxing of traditions has made for some forgettable incarnations—but the tribute and rites, true to the original, have had just the opposite outcomes. I think we all hope that the world’s balance of power is really maintained by a dapper and charming spy, rather than the autocracies of government and business. Another necessary element is of course the soundtrack, and some spectacularly memorable numbers have been recorded both by established artists and newcomers that cemented their careers by this association and honour: Die Another Day, Nobody Does it Better, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, London Calling and many big and brassy derivative works. The band The Scissor Sisters composed a lilting ballad, complimented by a very swank video in the style of the opening credits of a Bond film called The Land of 1000 Words, which I think, though not in the main arch of the stories—it is hard to say, however, what exactly is canonical about 007 who’s sort of like Dr. Who for continuity—makes for another powerful homage.

twenty mule team borax

Speaking of stained teeth, no where do I feel more self-conscious of my smile than when I see the contrast between something control-white, like when shaving or I suppose wearing a Santa Claus beard. All things considered, I like to think that my smile is fairly decent, and I don’t think teeth are meant to be gleaming whiter-than-white billboards, given modern and Western habits—but maybe that’s just sour-grapes.

ohaguro or iron smile

Until the breakup of the Shogun-system in the 1860s, it was a fashionable practice for aristocratic married women, mostly—and some men, to stain their teeth to a gunpowder grey to black. Not only were dark things, like ebony and finely-worked lacquer, considered more aesthetically balanced, the dyeing process also acted like a dental sealant to help stop tooth decay, and even the latest modern techniques (also coming from Japan) that promise to eliminate cavities. The practice was called ohaguro in Japan, meaning something like iron-drink, and involved daily applications of iron-filings dissolved in a solution of vinegar and tea. There were comparable methods of achieving the same effect throughout Asia in the past, including using the dye of aubergine skin in China. In vintage Japanese prints and in traditional theatre performances, one sometimes sees a very darkly rendered mouth, but that apparently was not just goth lip-stick but also a way to evoke an ancient practice once outlawed and unfashionable, sort of like Western cosmetic discoveries of belladonna or permanent make-up, but now being revisited.