necropolis or flying circus

Having learnt that Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen—better known as the Red Baron, the accomplished dog-fighting ace of World War I, has his final resting-place just around the corner here in Wiesbaden, I took the afternoon to investigate and explored the peaceful and expansive grounds of the Southern Cemetery (Südfriedhof).

Walking down the pathways, not rushing and wanting to properly pay my respects to the graves less famous—to me, at least, I noticed that quite a few tombstones bore a pasted on, rather tasteless notice, which read something to the effect, “The lease has expired – please see the cemetery administration.” Later H confirmed to me that indeed plots in Germany are generally rented for a period of twenty years, with the option of extending. What happens to the remains, I asked, and was told that they are usually gone by then. Embalming and chemical preservatives are not used here, nor expensive time-capsule coffins, so everything has decomposed a few a couple decades. I wondered what became of the headstones, beautiful and austere markers meant to last an eternity, but did not ask.
I didn't think people took them home (though the Roman practise was genuine parlour culture, burying their dead in their houses) or stored them somewhere off-site, like winter-tyres. It seems irreverent but I suppose space is at a premium and very soon there would not be room for anything else besides the grave. I noticed that the more modern epitaphs usually bore ones profession also. The architects had the most inspired grave-sites—I wondered what it meant to carry ones job into the here-after (jenseits) and hoped that all really had been proud enough of their careers to make that sort of statement. Other beautiful monuments abounded, like this bas-relief tombstone of a cavalry unit from 1914 that depicts some of the sad and terrible equipage of the war, gas-masks and bayonets. I was unsuccessful in locating the von Richthofen plot, noting that such infamy is usually something buried itself, and wondered how the aeronaut and son of the Prussian elite ended up in far western Hessen. It turns out that the Red Baron was disinterred several times since his final battle: von Richthofen was first put to rest with a military funeral not far from where he was shot down, near Amiens, France in 1918.
During the interbellum years, his brother attempted to bring the body back to be buried in the family crypt, but as the ancestral home now lay in Poland and convinced by Nazi authorities just then coming into power who hoped to exploit the rockstar status von Richthofen had attained through real and attributed victories, re-interred him in Berlin, with fanfare courtesy of the new government. During divided Germany, as the graveyard straddled the border, the headstone was often victim to a stray bullet fired at people as they tried to escape into West-Berlin, and in the mid-1970s a decision was made to transport the body to Wiesbaden and reunite him with the rest of his departed family. I don't want to regularly wander the necropoleis of the city as that's morbid but was glad I took the time to search it out and now that I know it literally is just around the corner, I will look around another day.

news at seven or genie in the bottle

Do you remember when everything was a matter of timing? Nostalgia aside, certainly it still is though without the help-meets of expert and extended knowledge that someone, somewhere is willing to share and amend recall.

Before this breed of miscellany turned trivia into something less than esoteric and studied but more of a lifestyle, one could not be tardy or absent from a broadcast—however well carefully curated in the afterwards. I gave an impromptu film review once upon a time on a cable television call-in show hosted by a younger Bill Macy, and where is that archived—closed-circuit and not even dispatched weakly beyond the star Sirius at this point? Cable was another kind of memory-hole, replace mostly by the well-aimed reception of satellite dishes. Somewhat earlier, the part-time network, Nick-at-Nite, had some pretty special and swank interstitial pieces—including a self-parody, an homage from Suzanne Vega of Tom's Diner (herself the godmother of digital music congress) for I Dream of Jeannie in reruns. What does that mean that that act is not documented (while so many others are) and someone could handily demonstrate this factoid as wrong?

information-action ratio

Via the ever-resonate Kottke, maker of fine hypertext products, blog comes the documentary adaptation of the engrossing Tom Standage work on technology and innovation, The Victorian Internet. The curious tale of the development, peopled with many colourful characters, visionaries and opportunists with not unfamiliar foresight of the telegraph provides an fascinating and disarming reflection on contemporary achievements, which has created far fewer connections and shrunk the world less than our 18th century forebears.

as high as an elephant's eye

While the staple crop, one of the more domineering and hardy among agriculture, perfected by millennia of stewardship, presents nothing objectionable in itself—and quite the opposite if tended responsibly, corn management and corn policy (native to America but an invasive species) has grown into something untenable and potentially disastrous.
Without even addressing the myopic decision to tinker with the genetics of our food, the way corn is grown, the harvest almost exclusively diverted into feeding animals and automobiles and producing food additives and fillers, like the dreaded corn-syrup. Not counting acres and acres destined to become ethanol, biodegradable plastics or base ingredients for something more chemical and refined than flour or meal, this second-hand nutrition, feeding livestock rather than eating what we've reaped ourselves, reduces the efficiency of the land by some eighty-percent and more. Of course, through subsidies at the expense of the tax-payer and at the expense of the environment, creating vast tracks of monocultures and demanding more and more resources and land be used to satisfy exponential appetites with nascent returns, are eventually articulated as something more profitable to some, which is also something not valued-added for all.

billy goat's gruff

The Pre-Surfer offers an interesting glimpse at a very nimble population of domestic goats in Morocco that have mastered the skills of tree-climbing in order to reach berries and other delicacies. It is the argan berries though that have driven them up a tree: afterwards, the indigestible kernels of the berry are pressed into oil for a variety of health and cosmetic applications—for humans, sort of like civet coffee. There is a certain unexpected grace to see these determined creatures posed and poised.  I wonder whom has whom trained to perform.

footlights or starry, starry night

From Der Spiegel's international desk comes an important piece not only about only about about the grandeur of being able to see the stars and constellations and the muzzling scourge of light-pollution but, I think, even more to its credit waxes philosophical about the great electrification experiment and what it means that our nighttime is something aggressively alienated with some awful municipal flash light tag.

To divide day from night, even in a nominal way, has been something formative—the source of myths, wonder and a star to sail by since time immemorial until not so long ago, and to lose that dichotomy of time for the sake of productivity or for a sense of security means quite a lot. Along with initiatives to preserve dark patches of sky, a multidisciplinary body is meeting to discuss the meta-effects on human health and ecology. Many communities in Germany are doing quite a bit to stave off the glare, and efforts in France are quite impressive, mandating that store-fronts, office buildings and even street lamps are switched off. What do you think? Can you see the spine of the Milky Way from your backyard or is there too much ambient competition to appreciate the night?

day-trip: oppenheim or down in the underground

The sun was out today as as part of disjointed reprieve in the weather and golden autumn before winter begins to set in.
I took a drive to the near- by town of Oppenheim around noon, marveling at the turning leaves of the vineyards racing past on one side and on opposite at the narrowing Rhine river and pleasure boots moored to hibernate for the season.
This town between Mainz and Speyer was along the road of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV's penitential Walk to Canossa (the source of the saying, “nach Canossa gehen,” meaning an act of humility or submission—taking ones lumps) a fortress in northern Italy, in hopes that the Pope might reverse the decision to excommunicate Henry for insisting that he was his sacral right to nominate bishops. The Emperor crossed the Alps barefoot and in a hair-shirt, the account goes, and was made to kneel outside in a blizzard for three days before being admitted into the fortress.
The town's history, however, extends back to Roman times and is nowadays renowned for its wine production, vines winding and cascading any place a foothold is available, and is anchored with a quite romantic little Altstadt surrounded by turreted-walls and the beautiful Gothic church of Saint Katherine, absolutely brilliant with a kaleidoscope of fine stained-glass windows.
This outstanding church is most significant work of the era between the cathedrals of Köln and Strasbourg, and having seen many additions and rebuilding since its dedication in 1225, has a small exhibit on stone-cutting and glass-liming as well as having a few extra puzzle pieces stored away. Behind the church is a small chapel with a Charnel House below, an ossuary with the bones of some 20 000 residents, pilgrims passing through and soldiers from the many battles that occurred here.

And just beyond, on the Weinburg, are the impressive ruins of castle Landskron, channelling the sunlight and offering a sweeping view of the region. These royal walls, the shell of an imperial palace, are testament to events the saw the town's complete destruction in the late 1600s, when burnt during the Nine Years' War when France took control of the Rhine valley, and the only other evidence is found in a suburban labyrinth of medieval passages that connect the vaulted cellars in a network that spans the entire town centre.
Guided tours can be arranged that lead one through these tunnels, though only an estimated three percent of mysterious maze has been rediscovered, corresponding to the town as it was before the fire and not necessarily as it was rebuilt, on the weekends, so this will be an adventure for another day.
Many houses and offices, however, are linked together by these passageways that rise and fall on several levels below the streets. This storied town also featured an elementary school with a wonderfully grand Art Deco (Bauhaus) doorway and façade from 1926.  There is too the former Franciscan Cloister of St. Bartholomäus (St. Bartholomew, now a parish church) with this really great modern, abstract mural on its walls makes it look like the shrine of the Autobots.

andromeda strain

A research laboratory in Braunschweig, working with ESA, the European Space Agency, has been culturing samples of extremely hardy bacteria that have been isolated in samples collected on parts of space-probes after being sterilised for assembly and deployment.

The biological significance in these studies is of course terrifying and exciting at the same time: like the super-bugs that have survived and thrived in hospital environments, scientists expected no living organism to be able to withstand these conditions, yet there they are and such bacteria have probably already been inadvertently sent out as terrestrial emissaries into space.