l’abbaye de landévennec

We’ve briefly touched on the abbey at Landévennec previously through its founder’s association with the myth of the City of Ys but both Saint Guénolé (Winwaloe, Gwenole, *460 - †532) and congregation of monks are worth addressing further on there own.
Son of Dumonian prince Fragan of Albany—Guénolé already had quite the saintly pedigree with reverend twin brothers and another canonised sibling besides and his mother Gwen Teirbron (Blanche in French or Alba Trimammis in Latin) who was revered as a Breton holy woman in her own right and with the colourful epithet meaning three-breasted, she was prayed to for fertility, venerated perhaps as a euhemerism of a more ancient mother goddess.

What was to become a Benedictine community from the eighth century until destroyed by Viking raids and then rebuilt in stone in the early 900s and then ultimately suppressed and its property sold off after the French Revolution (more here) was possessed of a great scriptorium and scrolls and early tomes.  
These archives included a rare medieval copy of the Notitia Digitatum—the late Roman Empire’s list of offices that addresses the administrative organisation of the court and provinces here presenting the shields from a register of military commands, the iconography and the ornament that bears a resemblance to the yin-and-yang symbol—the Taijitu—having evolved independently and from different traditions centuries before Taoist use, that were preserved.
Along with a wealth of other artefacts that were reunited after centuries of separation by the order in 1950 with the ancient site reconsecrated in a sense and opened as a museum with the brothers taking up residence in a new abbey just outside of the village.

brauðklefinn

Sensitive to the huge problem of food waste, an enterprising bakery in Iceland has installed a superannuated telephone booth on its premises in which to deposit the leftovers from the end of the day and offer them for sale to late-comers on a trust system at a deeply discounted price. Local patrons are delighted with the idea of being able to get fresh breads afterhours and help reduce what would otherwise end up in landfills. I hope more small businesses might take a cue from this bakery and invest in the honour and integrity of shoppers and right-sizing production.

6x6

cheese whey wine: this proposal does not exact merit the enthusiasm of either turophiles nor œnologists

nessie: DNA evidence suggest that the monster of Loch Ness might be a colony of giant eels

mensch-maschine: watch limber, articulate but abstract robots mimic human motion

an englishman in new york: a biographical look at the life and times of Quentin Crisp (previously)

cloverleaf: a gallery of freeway interchanges (previously), via Present /&/ Correct

formaggio ubriaco: bringing it full circle, this delicacy from Treviso sounds more palatable

ys

In addition to its own version of the Arthurian saga, the western part of Bretagne on the peninsula of Crozon, once known as Cournouallie with the same etymology as Cornwall across the Channel, has its own legendary cast of characters including Gradlon the Great (Gradlon Meur). A soldier of fortune courted by a sorcerous consort of a dying king called Malgven—who talked Gradlon into giving the old king a coup de grâce and ruling with her.
This cautionary tale continues with Malgven dying during childbirth with the couple’s daughter Dahut, a most unnatural and ungrateful child. Having established himself as an otherwise sage and just ruler—despite his earlier act of regicide, Gradlon commissioned the building of a fantastic city built on land reclaimed from the sea (Kêr Ys, low city), lavishly ornamented and with no expense spared, the waters held back by a system of dykes for which only Gradlon had the key to open the floodgates.
Over the years, Dahut had grown frivolous and vain and was wiled by a suitor to grant him access to Ys. Rather punch-drunk with her success of secreting away the key from her father and thinking she was throwing open the city gate, a torrent of water rushed in. The king was roused by a very historical bishop called Gwenole, who keeping vespers in the night and saw the flood waters rise and was beatified as founding bishop of the abbey of Landévennec (see also and when I first saw the ruin it reminded me of this amphitheatre on the Cornish coast that we visited and upon leaving the town, saw it was in fact twinned—jumelage—with The Lizard (An Lysardh), that peninsula in southern Cornwall.

The king took to his steed and rescued Dahut while the rest of the Ys’ people drowned. Dahut (I’d quite like to hear her version of the story) fell from the horse during the escape and was transformed into a mermaid, still haunting the Bay of Douarnenez to this day and luring sailors to violent ends against the cliffs with her siren song.

susan spotless says every litter bit hurts

Not to discount or dismiss the role of consumer-choice and the positive impact of reduction and reuse—and recycling programmes that are honest-brokers and not more greenwashing out-of-hand, but the manufacturing industry behind throw-away society has managed to deflect attention from itself and conveniently shift the onus and the guilt of pollution and over-consumption from themselves—saving their bottom-line, to the public.
Thoughline shows how industry launched a major re-education campaign to convince the public there was little need for thrift and re-use and to accept the single-use paradigm, seemingly enraged and enervated when the state of Vermont enacted legislation that outlawed the sale disposable glass-bottles, since they were ending up in pastures and the broken shards were dangerous for livestock gazing there. Fully aware of the down-stream effects of their actions and to sustain their profligacy as long as possible, food and beverage makers turned to the Ad Council to craft public sentiment with mascots (to include first that insufferable scolding child above, Lassie the television canine, and later Iron Eyes Cody, “the Crying Indian”) and public service announcements that make the disposable not just more palatable but patriotic (see also here, here and here). Their efforts have been pretty successful and tenacious, people internalising the message that our own greed, laziness and carelessness are the biggest contributors to the climate crisis and not industry or governments too cowed or complicit to regulate them. Listen to more episodes at the link above and subscribe for more disabusing origin stories.

genomkörning på svenska

Whilst some organisations have taken to deputising fast-food franchises with plenipotentiary and consular powers, we discover that a few such outposts in Sweden (fifty-five at least) are installing drive-thru charging stations for electric vehicles to supplement the coverage of state-sponsored infrastructure that leaves just enough gaps as to dissuade some drivers from committing to this other mode of transportation. While a full re-charge takes a bit longer than fulfilling one’s order, it still offers a nice alternative and adds extra value to queuing up.

first do no harm

We really appreciated this primer on cultivating the practise of meditation and mindfulness from Open Culture and found the segue, introducing our urge to conflate what’s by its nature simple with what’s easy and effortless, especially resonant and a draws one into reading the rest of the article.
Easier said than done, vice is far more amenable to marketing and branding than virtue, and our intuitive senses fail us along with patience and persistence and the advice we dispense to ourselves.  Like misapprehending the better for the Good, we imperil ourselves with overexposure to the vulnerabilities of denying gradualism in favour of the illusion of big and sudden change and instant results.  We cannot avail our compassion, I think without some impossibly big ask of enlightenment that’s unreasonable to expect of novices just muddling through, for institutional, caretaker sort of change and progress without sacrificing or compromising something of ourselves.  Much more to contemplate at the link up top.

blockbuster

The region of Bretagne is particularly dense with prehistoric megalithic structures and though not seeing the largest collection assembled at Carnac, we were still able to inspect quite a few of the amazing sites up close and all to ourselves. The biggest formation was in Camaret-sur-Mer, a row of seventy-two menhirs called the Alignement de Lagat-Jar (the Breton word for the monoliths) said to have inspired René Goscinny to create his Astérix le Gaulois and Obelix characters (adventures set in the Roman province of Armorica) when the author first saw this enchanted spot.
We stumbled across other dolmen too in fields and forests, once encountering local dog walkers (Kerloaz in Plouarzhel) that had a particular, ritual way of greeting the great stone.  Of some three-thousand once catalogued, only around seven hundred remain standing in situ, displaced for roadway construction or used as building materials. Surely not cannibalised from ancient sites, memorials like this French naval monument evoke the area‘s wealth of standing stones. Six to seven thousand years old, their purpose is a matter of speculation though the Matter of Britain (and the Matter of Brittany which has its own version of the legend) accounts for the precision and straightness of the lines due to the fact that they were Roman soldiers on the march, turned to stone by Merlin or were the artefacts of giants.