and smale foweles maken melodye

Revisiting a perennial favourite—whan that Aprille—in literary criticism, we like indulging the conceit of high school English teachers that the preamble from Geoffrey Chaucer’s late fourteenth century Canterbury Tales, with minimal footnotes and intervention, is somehow immediately intelligible to contemporary ears. It’s a bit of fun nonetheless and recall having to recite the prologue from memory and we were instructed to dress-up as one of the twenty-four pilgrims in school. Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende.

majority rule with minority protection

Though the outcome for Brexit is still very much up in the air, a working group composed of experts in ethnography and sociology from the UK top institutions has come together to explore ways to heal the rift that political polarisation has permeated in the country.  Among the initiatives suggested include a national expo and the appointment of a “healing czar” whom would be charged with promoting togetherness and reconciliation. Out of an aversion to being seen as taking sides, the Royal Family has all but recused themselves but a weekend parliamentary off-site meeting, several celebrities were nominated for consideration, including Bob Geldof (previously), Alice Nutter, the female lead singer formerly a part of Chumbawamba and personality David Van Day, formerly of the groups Dollar, Guys ‘n’ Dolls and Bucks Fizz who was also an aspiring council politician.

plop, plop, fizz, fizz

Swedish sound artist Alexander Höglund ordered different effervescent pain-relieving tablets from around the world and brought them to his recording studio in Malmö to press a limited run of vinyl records as a meditation on the fizzing sounds as the pills slowly dissolve.
The resulting album, Substance, is surprisingly soothing and perhaps a nice placebo—resonant with me as well for the morning ritual H calls my “vitamin water”—and makes me want to experiment a bit with the drinking vessel and water levels and makes me wonder how much of the experience one has to take in to achieve the desired result, like the impression that the angry hiss of tablet finding just a few drops of moisture instead of the full glass would probably begrudge any pharmacological efficacy.

schatzanweisung

Having matriculated with the Bauhaus in 1921 and demonstrating considerable typographic talent, Herman Bayer (*1900 - †1985—previously here and here) while attending school in Weimar, we learn from Coudal Partners’ Quick Links, was commissioned in 1923 by the state of Thüringen to create Notgeld—emergency currency for a nation that after suffering defeat in the Great War—to address run-away, hyperinflation. Paper money went into circulation as soon as it was printed as it became practically worthless immediately.

tableau vivant

Via Memo of the Air, we are excited that it’s once again time to peruse the gallery of finalists for the Sony World Photography Award (previously).  Among those selected are Stephan Zirwes for his perspectives of public pools from above and this scene of Curaçaoan veterinarian Odette Doest arriving home to her menagerie after a long day at work captured by Jasper Doest, plus sixty-odd other entries from hobbyists, students and professionals to review at the links above.

polar azimuthal projection

Via Strange Company, we are introduced to the magnificent, late sixteenth century chart of the known world, Urbano Monte’s Planisphere.
Splitting from the traditional representation of the globe made the industry-standard by Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in the preceding century, which portrayed the constant bearings of sailing vessels (curved rhumb lines) as straight paths, Monte deconstructed the round Earth as sixty separate surfaces that could be reassembled to study the entire atlas comprehensively. The resulting masterwork is full of tiny details and illustrations but is also testament to Monte’s geographic understanding on a continent scale, surpassing his peers by getting the Mediterranean and Africa more to scale than other depictions and not making California an island. More to explore at the links above.

gewöhnlicher spindelstrauch

There’s a rather unassuming shrub growing in the backyard with the scientific nomenclature Euonymus europaeus, the European Spindle that colourfully blooms with these clashing and poisonous pink and red flowers in early September that begin to bud (below) in April.
This small tree that inhabits the edge of forests and whose hard wood was the preferred material for making spindles for spinning wool and other implements. The infrequent surname Swindler, rather than the obvious connotation, derives from a northern dialectal variant for those who make spindles—the ‘sw’ transformation less taxing on the tongue than ‘sp.’

tickety boo