j’adoube or game and gambit

After being invented in the India sub-continent, the game of chess in its recognisable and modern was one of those cultural commodities, like language, writing and religion, which was quickly disseminated all over the world and was firmly entrenched by the year one thousand. The game was so popular and universally played that societies were also quick to undertake reimaging their boards and chessmen after their own iconography and values.

The rules of engagement were the same but sculptors and artists were given great license to reflect their own outlook on the world. Chessboards from Islamic countries hosted an army of abstract figures because of the proscription against making things in the likeness of natural beings and had a vizier accompanying the sultan instead of a queen, Asian boards represented their court traditions, pawns all around were simple and anonymous, and these finely crafts objects would have been treasured and handed down as heirlooms. The historical details of the place and period in which these playing pieces were made comes across, as does the makers’ sense of hierarchy and how to mount defenses. Instead of our modern Rook, the Tower, the Viking royals of this set discovered on Scottish Lewis Island under Norse rule are flanked by fearsome berserkers. All the queens of these sets share the same forlorn and distant look, and perhaps because she is frustrated that her movement is limited to one diagonal square at a time. The question of mobility for this sovereign was one of the only major changes to the rules in centuries—though sadly not an attitude adopted by society at large until much, much later: about five hundred years later going from having even less range than a pawn to becoming the most versatile and powerful piece on the chessboard. For a time, this liberation caused the European game to be named “Mad Queen” chess, which sounds like a story for Lewis Carroll.

candida or grist for the mill

This is somewhat of a delicate subject, especially coming from those who are not exactly sympathetic to the matter, but I learned that the germ candida, a species of yeast, that’s responsible for infections in women also presents itself as diaper-rash in infants, thrush (a particularly nasty coated-tongue that young children get), acne in adolescents and most interestingly the dry patches of skin that usually attributed to psoriasis and dandruff (glands in the skin and hair folicals are designed to prevent these out-breaks but are often compromised by other factors). This yeast travels with us as part of our gut flora all our lives but is mostly kept in check by other beneficial bacteria that complement our digestive tracts that compete for space and nutrients, symbiotically breaking down those foodstuffs that we can’t handle whole ourselves. Though not the only cause of fungal infections, repairing too quickly to antibiotics or other such non-discriminatory treatments that, like a wrecking-ball, kill off those good germs that keeps us balanced.

data knows best

Via the Browser comes a clever and creepy piece by writer Sarah Wilson on the potential—nay, inevitably paternalistic nature of the internet of things, wherein one’s smart appliances, imbued with a life and will of their own collaborate to ensure that their human masters are given exactly what they need and to remain ever vigilant. I wouldn’t qualify the scenario as a satirical one since we are all lurching—or being dragged in that direction anyway, towards a silent intrusiveness and helpless against this obliging conspiracy.  I wonder if we might want to grow more dispossessed with this notion of hinging everything together.  What do you think?  Are we already too far gone to have a choice in the matter?

like a picture print from currier and ives

As the fourth Advent comes rolling in, here are a few scenes from Christmas markets in Wiesbaden, Leipzig and Erfurt to celebrate the season. PfRC wishes you all good cheer, be kind to one another, and thanks for visiting.

two-d or shrinky dinks

Collectors’ Weekly has a nifty little show-and-tell feature on the Mid-Century Modern phenomenon of Colorforms.

It was interesting to learn about the imaginative couple, Patricia and Harry Kislevitz, who created the die-cut vinyl shapes that can be stuck to a smooth surface with many offshoots but what struck me most was the candid tone of the article that was bookended by trying to demystify the myth of the infinite imaginations of children. It was funny but I’m not sure where that came from, and there’s surely no stint implied for cultivating creativity with simple toys like these.

beaker culture

Looking at this glass without knowing its context and provenance, one might think it’s a beautifully crafted piece of Nordic school Art Déco.

This vessel, one of fourteen known extant pieces, however, is called the Beaker of Saint Hedwig, a Polish duchess from Bavaria with a great reputation for her charitable works, like her niece Elizabeth. It was these glasses, however, commissioned by her husband, Henry Long Beard, Duke of Poland, hundred years ago which really cemented Hedwig’s fame and beatification. After the royal couple had reared twelve children (forming connections to a vast swath of European history) and the Duke had led a life of political intrigue and had some dealings with profiteering during the Crusades (where these fine glasses were almost definitely created, as such craftsmanship was not to be found in medieval Europe), the two turned to a more pious way of existence. Henry accepted most of Hedwig’s quirks and flagellations, but the Duke found it beyond to be too much when his wife gave up wine and only drank water.

Whether it was in fact the bath-water of the nunnery, as some say, the fact remained that the water supply of the day was potentially sickening to drink and wines and spirits were generally much safer and cleaner and so the Duke grew concerned about her health. Presenting her a collection of fine goblets—though the beakers are more vase-shaped and look awkward for actually drinking out of, maybe better suited as a communion cup—the Duke hoped his wife would change her habits but was disappointed when she still poured plain old water into them. Later, however, the Duke saw that when Hedwig raised the glass to her lips to drink, the water was changed miraculously into wine. The pictured glass is from the British Museum but the beakers have been held in the treasuries of abbeys and cathedrals as holy relics for centuries. In fact, I am pretty certain that I passed one more from the set from the same workshop in the very fine museum collection of the Coburg Fortress without realising it. There are quite a few of the Hedwig glasses in Germany, including one in the Cathedral of Minden—and H and I will have to be on the look-out during our travels.

life on mars or gulp and gulf

Researchers are intrigued by little belches in highly localised areas of the Martian crater that the Curiosity Rover is exploring. This venting may be due to some unknown geological arrangement or could be an indication of the methanogenesis of ancient or existing microbial life just under the planet’s surface. Scientists are cautiously optimistic and indeed this is exciting news, but I wonder how an alien researcher might observe our own gassy world.

djennistan or the witch of endor

Happily, I never had any exposure to the fringe belief that Islam worships a false god, a lunar deity, and when such ideas were in circulation, they were apparently limited to the audience of televangelists in America—though still potentially a dangerous thing as the former president of the US also was so inspired and many will believe the same without any academic background. Such pointed statements are obviously meant for scandal and slander but really do a disservice to all faiths when it comes to the question of incongruities that are common to every religion and put ahead of scholarship and understanding notions that Islam is inherently violent or just other—as if any group has a monopoly on bad behaviour and intolerance.

Some suggested, seemingly with an agenda, that the creator god of the Muslims was not a true god but rather an idol that was previously worshiped in Mecca as a Moon god, the long-established place of pilgrimage having aboriginal cults of gods for every day of the year. There was one Hubal, housed in the Ka’aba, that  had a special reverence—being an idol hewn from possibly meteoritic stone that fell to Earth and later studies conflate this with the Hadj and Allah. The Quran (also being in the imaginations of many as something written in secret, untranslatable and inaccessible to outsiders) mentions that the grandfather of Mohammed was expected to sacrifice his son, the father of Mohammed, to this god—which is avoided in an intervention a little less gruesome than the Slaughter of the Innocents. Christianity has not only many borrowings but also a lot of concessions to pagan traditions and customs to what came before.  One of the more theologically fascinating beings that Islam incorporates from earlier mythology—and there’s no shame in that, is the supernatural creature known as the genie.

Belief in such familiars is not universal and not a tenet of faith necessarily, but some lore holds that jinn are ætherial beings, distinct from angels in that they have free-will like humans and as such can be good or evil. Genies inhabit a parallel universe known as Djinnestan and manifest themselves on Earth as something like shoulder angels and devils, competing moral advocates. Usually just the wicked are predisposed to taking bad advice but sometimes a good genie can help someone reform, and not just grant wishes in an ironic fashion. The particularly troublesome ones fell in with a character named Iblīs, who refused to bow to God’s latest creation—Man. This is a recurring theme but Iblīs and his followers refused to be impressed with Adam and Eve out of arrogance rather than not kneeling before any others but God. For this act of pridefulness, God condemned Iblīs and his followers to Hell for all eternity. God, however, commuted the sentence, at Iblīs’ request, to Judgment Day, so the dissembler could try to prove his case and demonstrate that humans were the inferior ones after all.