turkey lurkey

Catching up on some post-Thanksgiving podcast listening, we were delighted to learn of the existence of priceless collaboration between Susan J Vitucci and Henry Krieger in their silly and engaging operetta Love’s Fowl that recounts the continuing adventures of Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Little or by her stage diva name, La Pulcina Piccola—but through the filter of opera buffa, with an impressive, classically informed score and libretto sung in Italian, featured in a poultry-themed left-overs episode of This American Life.
Our hero has graduated from her initial hysterical though determined mission (despite leaping to the wrong conclusion, her perseverance is what saved her life whereas her companions all dawdled and became Foxy Loxy’s meal—those without scruples always ready and willing to take advantage of panic and confusion) to warn the King that the sky is falling to face some of the more vexing but equally universal challenges of fairy stories and folklore (the familiar, initial trope is classified as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 20c but together, we run the entire gamut), a cumulative story like the original premise it begins with, repetitious in some way but always advancing, including swashing-buckling on the high seas, statecraft and romantic liaisons.

a lerner and loewe production

With a strong cast including Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet, Richard Burton and Roddy McDowall though opening-night critical reception was mixed, Camelot premiered on Broadway at the Majestic on this day in 1960—running ultimately for over eight hundred performances in the course of three years before going on tour, netting several awards and a cinematic adaptation (also boosting a strong suite of actors).  It’s a little strange to think in hindsight that the Kennedy White House was accorded those airs and refinement of chivalry and idealism because the stage play and cast recording were so well inculcated in popular culture and not the other way around. I wonder where else this phenomena, this transference takes hold. At the end of the second and final act, with infidelity leading to betrayal and bloodshed and the Round Table broken, King Arthur encounters a young stowaway called Tom of Warwick (Robin Stewart, Mike Abbott on ITV’s Bless this House) whom he knights, hoping that this field promotion will ensure that his legend and the Matter of Britain are carried forward for future generations.

Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot,
For one brief, shining moment
That was known as Camelot.

electioneering

Whilst it is an indisputably good rule of thumb to adhere by that what provokes the most outrage also is deserving of most research before propagating, it also behooves one to know what’s in the quiver of political canvassers so one might better recognize the disguised subterfuge for what it is. Though certain campaigns may be more effective than others and particular groups may be targeted more relentless than others by dint of susceptibility and reception (real, perceived or attributed), the biggest danger lies in fancying ourselves immune to such influence peddling.

aus tradition grenzen überschreiten

With illustrious alumni including H, Angela Merkel, Robert Schumann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Tycho Brahe, the University of Leipzig is one of the world’s most storied and preeminent institutions of higher learning and second longest in existence only to that of Heidelberg (1386) in Germany and was officially founded on this day in 1409 to provide a new alma mater to German-speaking academics that had fled the reformation movement agitated by Jan Hus in Prague with the endorsement of the papacy.
To ensure the university’s independence and scholastic freedom from state influence, the founders gifted the institution first three then a total of eight nearby villages as sources of revenue, an arrangement that continued through the nineteenth century. Pictured here is the Paulinerkirche, which served as the university’s anchor since the beginning, until its demolition by the government of East Germany in 1968 but rebuild in modernist style in 2012 as the Paulinum (das Aula und Universitätskirche Sankt Pauli) with the former dormitory high rise—meant to suggest an open book, now City-Hochhaus beside. The above motto translates, (from) a tradition of crossing borders and was one of the first institutions to allow female guests to audit classes, eventually awarding its first doctor of jurisprudence degree to a Russian graduate student called Anna Yevreinova in 1873 and during the transition period of the decline and eventual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, many from the newly independent republics turned to Leipzig as an administrative and educational model.

пицца хат

Nearly as strange and forgotten as the time when Pepsi Cola had the second largest naval fleet in the world, Miss Cellania reminds us of the time in 1997 when Mikhail Gorbachev was promoting an international pizza franchise (see also).
It can be a bit treacherous for leaders to outlive their countries or for celebrities or politicians to otherwise survive beyond their careers when there’s little prospect for a next chapter and every time a moment like this appears in a collection of clips of embarrassing star endorsements, it does leave a bit of a breadcrumb of clickbait behind, yet there’s a truly complex narrative and history encapsulated in this sixty-second spot that’s more respectful than most advertising to geopolitics and recent history and one worth exploring in detail.

respektrente

The panel jury of the Society for the Germany Language (GfdS, Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache) in Wiesbaden has submitted its selection for Wort des Jahres (previously) with the above portmanteau that highlights the problem that many retirees face in old age of despite having contributed to a full pension all their careers, are not seeing the returns to fund their accustomed lifestyle. Rather than a universal basic income, legislators propose broadly means to supplement seniors at the end of one chapter of their working lives. Respektrente beat out Rollerchaos, another neologism, to describe the regrettable opening up the sidewalks to electric-scooters.

herrnhuter stern

We’re getting ready to hang up our Moravian stars as the first festoonery of the season and the process of constructing the lantern and piecing together the paper cones is always an engaging ritual.
The decoration and design originated in the 1830s in a Moravian church (see also) boarding school for boys near the town of Görlitz to impart students with a lesson in geometry—the twenty-six-sided star being called a rhombicuboctahedron. Around 1880, an alumnus of the Pædagogium made the stars and their instruction manuals for sale in his bookstore and his son went on to open a factory in 1897 in the village of Herrnhut under the auspices of the church that makes and distributes the stars to this day.

thumpety, thump, thump

Via Boing Boing, we are treated to a musical duet of Leon Redbone and Dr John performing “Frosty the Snowman” from the former’s 1988 holiday album Christmas Island. Both musicians passed away earlier this year within weeks of each other.  Redbone also voiced the Narrator Snowman (inspired by the Rankin and Bass characters) in the 2003 Christmas comedy Elf.