spidey-sense

For hundreds of years people have observed the phenomena of ballooning or kiting behaviour by small spiders that allow them to launch themselves and glide for hundreds of kilometres over land and sea, suspended aloft on gossamer leads.
Even the German term for “Indian summer,” Altweiber-sommer, references the season when the winds fill with errant webs, but for nearly as long as people have noticed this mode of transport, we learn via Dave Log, something has also struck naturalists as aerodynamically incomplete about the explanation that they were just haplessly bobbing along. Researchers, experimenting on past suppositions, are discovering that spiders are not only harnessing the wind but also electrostatic forces to take to the skies, steering their course by sensing and negotiating the Earth’s inchoate magnetic field and the discharge of lightning. 

main street, usa

Our gratitude once again to Nag on the Lake for acquainting us with the enigmatic and extensive catalogue of historic, nostalgic photography of Barry L Gfeller.
A seemingly solitary person who lived and died in his childhood home was surprisingly well-travelled and his survivors were shocked to find among his legacy over fifty thousand snap-shots documenting over two decades of road-trips across the United States and Canada, fossilising impressions of Main Streets that in many cases no longer exist. Caretakers are actively searching out a permanent home that could host all the pictures and make them available to the public and to researchers. The current host website is pretty sophisticated, nonetheless, and features interactive maps where one can trace Gfeller’s travels and perhaps find a vintage scene of one’s own town. Be sure to visit the links above to learn more.

purse-spective or beyond the valley of secret treasures

Via the splendiferous Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (a quite nice tradition) we encounter street artist Thrashbird who has turned an abandoned cement factory on the Oregon-Idaho border—all the limestone has been quarried away and now with the bust following the boom, the place is a veritable ghost town—into a giant and expressive canvas to make a statement on exploitation and industrial decay. Huge concrete blocks—perhaps test or sample structures worked up for potential clients—were strewn along the former factory grounds and Thrashbird envisioned them transfixed as monumental handbags—the luxury sort that attracts counterfeits.  Visit the links above to learn more.

it happens again and again, like the sunrise

A series of entries from marginal illustrations of a 1922 collection of southwestern Native American folktales prompted us to dig a bit deeper to discover an interesting anthology of Pueblo parables and myths gathered for a young girl with an insatiable appetite for a good story, sort of a Scheherazade character.  
Taytay’s Tales (being the grandfather who most often is the one to impart this oral tradition down to the next generation) feature dozens of Hopi and Pueblo stories retold with analysis by ethnographer Elizabeth Willis De Huff (in a fairly enlightened way for the time) and illustrated with the help of two young Hopi natives, Fred Kabotie (whose Indian name is the title) and Otis Polelonema. All the stories and pictures are available to peruse at the link above.

thrones and dominions or patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel

Though thwarted by the rise of fascism and its spectacular failure in Europe with the film being kept out of circulation for seventy years along with other laudable efforts of the Warner Brothers studio to make sure that the politics of totalitarianism weren’t glorified in North America as well (more here), the 1933 pre-Code Hollywood (the era before the Hays’ rules on self-censorship that curtailed what had previously been rather frank depictions of profanity, violence, illicit drug-use and promiscuity as well as rhetorically dangerous and subversive points of view, unchecked) production of Gabriel over the White House, starring Walter Huston, father of director John Huston. With the financial backing and creative input of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, the bizarre political fantasy, wish-fulfilment piece, named for the archangel, depicts a typically partisan United States president transfigured after a near-death encounter (resulting from a automobile accident) by divine intervention.
Congress makes good on their commitment to impeach the president (please visit this link if the video does not display), who responds by first nationising the production and sale of alcohol—the country’s ill-fated experiment with Prohibition (previously) having just concluded—then dissolving the legislative and judicial branches and declaring himself dictator (presumably in the imperial Roman sense, or perhaps not) and seizing absolute power. In order to speed the US recovery from the Great Depression in the interbellum period, the president directs the creation of a corps of construction workers to be employed improving national infrastructure and creates a federal police force of ‘stormtroopers’ to enforce martial law. Threatening to destroy the world with America’s new secret weapon, the president successfully lobbies global powers for a lasting peace and having accomplished his divinely-appointed mission, the president is quietly assumed into the bosom of heaven.

6x6

epa epa eeeeepaaaaaahhhhhh: Scott Pruitt falls on his sword finally but the US Environmental Protection Agency Chief in-waiting is an even bigger corporate shill

there are nicer ways to do it but the nice always fail: the power of protest music

a broken chain lies at her feet as she walks forward: Therese Patricia Okoumou scales the Statue of Liberty in the name of her fellow immigrants

angry baby: London’s mayor approves the display of a blimp over the Houses of Parliament during Trump’s visit to the capital

phantom islands: an atlas of maritime artefacts, via Things Magazine

mud larking: a massive curation of seven hundred thousand articles recovered from a single canal in Amsterdam, via Waxy 

post-dated post script: sirmione

Having learned rather late that Manerba did indeed have a port sufficiently deep enough to permit ferries to dock and connect it to the other towns and villages along Lake Garda, we crossed towards Dusano and boarded the ferry to take another look at the ancient town and strategic port fortifications at the head of the promontory that divides the southern part of the lake.
Helpfully there was a chart of Lidl di Garda in the passenger ferry that we had mostly to ourselves to aid with orientation. A popular retreat from Verona and Venice for Roman administrators for millennia, one of the early house-proud famous residents of the resort town was the poet Catullus—versifier of love, invectives and works of condolence (opera singer Maria Callas was a later one), whom also lent his name to a grotto containing one the best-preserved examples of a private home of the first century and one of the town’s chief sites.
The other landmark of Sirmione is the bastion in the harbour, the Scaliger (nobles of Verona) castle compound built in the late eleventh century.
Surrounded by a system of moats and drawbridges that are navigable by nimbler boats still to this day afforded a protected place for the fleet—becoming an outpost of the thalassocracy of Venice and later part of the Austro-Hungarian holdings—to be launched and serviced in safety and shielded from enemy scouts trying to assess their opponents’ strength.

post-dated post script: lago benàco

Framed by the edge of the Dolomites—between Venice and Milano—Lake Garda (originally Benacus in Latin, both stemming from the Germanic root for warden and guard) and hewn by glaciers, we found ourselves lured out on the waters for another, extended boat trip that afforded us the chance to see most of the towns and villages along the shore and experience the majestic sweep of the forested foothills that rose steeply into mountains, the Gruppo del Baldo.
We passed camp at Isola San Biagio with Isola dei Conigli (the isle of the rabbits) no longer connected by a land bridge and thus isolating the bunnies. I had wondered about this change since first arriving and noting that one couldn’t walk there any longer and wondering if there was that much more snow melt flowing down into the valley or if before we had just visited at a particularly dry time.   In any case, I was impressed by the efforts of the residents to curb plastic waste by installing rubbish bins exclusive for recycling packaging along side every regular receptacle.
We also inspected the larger Isola de Garda where Francis of Assisi founded a monastery originally in the eleventh century (now marked by a Venetian façade), the promontory of Sirmione with its Veronese defensive castle, the bathing spot at San Felice del Benaco, Torri del Benaco and Salò, once the seat of government of Socialist Italy.
Not long after we docked at the old port in Manerba and returned our boat, there was the sudden and intense onset of a storm that first kicked up a lot of dust into the air and turned the sky a quite peculiar and ominous shade.
The geological history of this region informs very a favourably mild Mediterranean, to include support for citrus fruits, generating winds (i venti—all of which are named for their characteristics) at the mountain tops that rush into the valley, only to return to higher altitudes at the end of the day. I was a little worried about the ducks but they seemed to take to the surf and the rough waters like champions and seasoned veterans—even the babies.
The swans too seemed especially dramatic, staying together and blending in with the white-capped cresting waves and the buoys that bounced around. Protected as we were in the cove, I couldn’t imagine what it might have been like on the open lake. It grew stormy over the next few nights but by morning, all appeared back to normal and the hot, still conditions returned, with hardly a trace of wind or rain.