jardinière

My mother recently shared with me this brilliant and unending series of images of landscaping and gardening elements. Gathered from a variety of sources, there a lot of clever and creative ideas that I would like to incorporate. Even without a little plot of land to cultivate right now, I am always drawn to such handiwork and can never resist angling for photos of statues and art work among well tended plants and flowers. Though I know I have hundreds of other photos besides of puti and other personifications posing in gracious gardens, I went back that magical experience we had from not too long ago of exploring the grounds of Villa Carlotta on Lake Como.
Though the planters and statuary on the link are modern and not as ornate and expansive, one can really do a lot with a little space. On exiting the villa grounds, there was a strange group of what appeared to be garden gnomes, half hidden in the hedges, that did not quite fit, I though, with the rest of the style and craftsmanship. The original tenants, however, were Germans, so I suppose that has to be taken into consideration.

mainhattan

I took a train to spend the day in the city of Frankfurt am Main and though I had been through there numerous times, I had not taken the chance to scout of the metropolis without a specific agenda and destination—usually a transportation hub. That day, however, I got to wonder at the skyline and linger over the contrasts of a work-in-progress, becoming and the historic fait accompli—much of which had been lovingly restored with care and true to the original, and some of the grittiness, and I  had the chance to see quite a few sights. I saw the big euro sign, which the € always made me think of Uncle Scrooge's (Onkel Dagoberts) Money Bin, before the European Central Bank (EZB) building.

Later walking towards the East Harbour (Osthafen) learned that that towering spire—in every German community one sees scaffolding and construction cranes busy with something—visible behind the beautiful and hallowed Cathedral of Frankfurt (Dom Sankt Bartholomäus), which is also under construction, and the Eiserner Steg, the footbridge across the Main River, is to be the future home of the European Union's financial institution, built on the grounds of the Wholesale Market Halls (Großmarkthalle) of docklands.

Further, as home to Germany's stock market, the DAX, the city has attracted an ensemble of banks and other business headquarters, hence the modern skyscrapers. I thought it good luck to rub the bear's nose and hang on the bull's horns but I don't know if that's really the customary thing to do.

I'll have to ask one of those stock-brokers next time. In back of the timbered houses and medieval edifices that comprise the city's core, the old Rathaus and its extensions known as the Römer—where emperors, newly crowned in the nearby cathedral had their celebratory banquets and is now a happy venue for civil marriages, lies the Pauluskirche (the Lutheran Church of St. Paul), which is an important political monument.
It was really only used as a consecrated place of worship sporadically.  The site is more renowned as the venue for Germany's first democratic national assembly, a convention that led to the creation of the Weimar Republic and, after WWII and the reunification.

I never had the chance before to visit the impressive upper, plenary chamber, the assembly hall, and learn about its history, as it was occupied on a previous visit with some awards ceremony. Surely, there is a lot more to discover and to learn about the city, and I am looking forward to my (and our) next chance to visit.

ligature, ligament

After seeing a street sign like those pictured, featuring a few letters combined as a single glyph, I wondered about what allowances are given to these classy but antiquated examples of paleography. Curiosity yielded former requirements for such presentation in order to maintain a level of economy and to maximise the amount of text that could be fit on a page, though various methods. Researching a little bit, and courtesy of Nag on the Lake, I came across an interesting vignette on the development and history of typography in the West. I wonder what sort of champions are out there in the age of WYSIWYG and without the pressure for brevity in taxonomy.

lass' sie nach berlin kommen or détente

Better late than never, but I finally had the chance to visit the city museum exhibit on John Fitzgerald Kennedy's state visit to West Germany, assembled to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the event earlier in the summer and in anticipation of President Obama's visit. Kennedy's visit was wildly popular drawing throngs numbering at a million, and the speech featured a couple of other phrases in German and in Latin.

Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was 'civis romanus sum.' Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner!'... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner!'

Kennedy's tour, however, did not only include the divided capital but also the Rhein-Main region where the reception was equally well-attended and well-remembered, with this interesting retrospective on display. Traveling from Köln, to Bonn in quick succession, overnighted in Wiesbaden (now a Dorint but then the Hindenberg Hotel by the train station) before traveling to Frankfurt and then Berlin. Tens of thousands in Wiesbaden alone flocked to follow the US president's parade route.
The impact of the visit was hopeful and hysterical and in contrast to the efforts of French diplomatic efforts, helped to provide resistance to the slip of the balance of power, appeasement (Entspannungspolitik) and independence towards Europe as de Gaulle was hoping to accomplish. I would like to learn more of this “third pole” notion that France advocated and how that affected the political atmosphere at the time and to be displaced by a statement of solidarity.

naming-convention or store-brand

Who knew that pharmaceutical companies get to choose what the generic equivalent (the chemical formula for the active, essential ingredient) of their branded drugs are called—and within well-defined boundaries of pseudo-Latin and truth-in-advertising decided by a commission of grammarians?
Though free to name their patent-medicine whatever they see fit (that's not already claimed) there are restrictions imposed by the American body that governs such things are generally adhered to around the world. The rules include that prefixes that imply bigger, better, stronger, faster cannot be used nor any that name a certain part of the body nor a specific disease or handicap, and classes of drugs have their own root word, like -azepam for anti-anxiety drugs or -lukast for asthma treatments. One can find more details at the link. Though not the ones to vet new medicines, having these rules do not inspire confidence—for me, at least. Further, they can be fun names but I do wonder why companies have interest in preserving their discovery, surname, after their licenses and patents have expired.

geomancer

PfRC has been a little inclined towards cartography lately, and I am not sure if the allure is because I am so much a visual-learner (for no compelling reason, I never considered myself one but it is something to think about) or appreciate the utility and economy that comes with a bit of superimposition and putting forth geography as a means of illustration, more than just for navigating from point to point. Twisted Sifter featured an irresistible collection of forty maps from various sources that depict some really keen trivia. Not all of these examples are intuitive or seem to stand up to rigour but all are still illuminating to puzzle out or try to verify for oneself. If you could redraw any and all the geopolitical boundaries, what statics and demographics would you have the world (or your part of it) show?

bright young things or kick-started

Writing for the Journal of the American Revolution, Tod Andrlik presents a frankly mind-boggling yet surprisingly elementary, knowable list of the ages of the important players, the Founding Fathers and their foils, when independence was declared back in 1776. I suppose that I had my preconceptions of a lot of venerable figures assembled assembled, romancised on the obverse of currency and in other legends, but to survey the facts and figures is really disabusing. Many were quite young at the time:

James Madison was 25 years of age
Marquis de Lafayette, 18
Alexander Hamilton, 21
James Monroe, 18
Aaron Burr, 20
Betsy Ross, 24

I had no idea, and it's like finding out that Juliet and her Romeo are meant to be fourteen and fifteen year olds. George Washington, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were all significantly older, but no ageism was to be found on either side (nor implied here neither). Perhaps the sole exception was in setting the minimum age for presidency at five-and-thirty.

encyclopedia brown

Via Slate Magazine's the Vault comes an introduction to one historian's elegant way to impart and present (without hyperbole) the entire rise and fall of civilisations and all other disciplines besides with a nuanced sort of economy. These fold-out histomaps (published by an established catrography company) expanded into a five foot long chart that allowed one to trace the development and connections of empires and inventions. Distributing them singly was certainly a way to introduce the reading public to innovation and continuum without having to invest in volumes. Some of the older books that we have in our library have some amazing inserts and diagrams, some really keen interactive stuff like layered trees and charts and anatomical illustrations, but nothing that one could carry around, for reference. Click on the picture to see much more detail but be sure to visit the Vault and check out the source link also features too for an interesting compendium of map-related exhibitions.