travelogue

Spoon & Tamago refers to a retrospective of the pioneering photojournalist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore (*1856 - †1928), avid traveler and first female board member of the National Geographic Society. Not only did she bring her readership reports and images of the Far East—both the exotic and the everyday from a century ago, the conservationist and author also brought cherry trees (see also here and here) from Japan to Washington, DC. Much more to explore at the link up top.

federalist style

The American Institute of Architects are expressing grave displeasure and concern over a draft plan has surfaced to mandate all government buildings adhere to the principles of “classical architecture,” (certainly the the stuff of the L’Enfant Plan but also the plantation house and anything modern such as this would never be built) decrying this sort command, top down planning that would severely curtail creative licenses and the input of the host community. Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again revises a 1962 guide commissioned by John Kennedy (see also) and composed by New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a recognised and respected scholar and critic, that encouraged experimentation and for buildings to be reflective of contemporary movements.

appalling abuse of public trust

In a gesture that means nothing and everything, junior Senator from Utah, former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican nominee for president of the United States, Mitt Romney (also known by his Twitter handle Pierre Delecto) was the sole member of the Grand Old Party to demonstrate any conviction of character and find Trump guilty of the accusations that the House of Representatives levied against him. Romney, moreover, is the first Senator in history to convict a member of his own party—the votes for removing a seated president in the case of Andrew Johnson and William Clinton following party lines. We’ll see what sort of wrath and inspiration that this act will bring.

pieces of eight

Almost a year to the day ahead of the decimalization of the United Kingdom and Ireland’s currency of pounds, shillings and pence—money retaining its former value and only the breakdown of sub-units reconfigured, the Overseas Territory officially adopted the Bermudian dollar, now pegged to the US dollar but significantly for the time a departure, a prefiguring of the Commonwealth’s broader trend away from accounting for twenty shillings to the pound, each shilling made up of twelve pence.
Eventually each new pence, “p,” was worth two and four-tenths times an old pence, “d.” Meanwhile, China had been employing an intuitive decimal-based currency for the past two millennia, Imperial Russia had made its ruble so since 1704, the US Coinage Act of 1792 favoured a base-ten system (despite their infamous recalcitrance when it comes to Imperial Weights & Measures) as did the French in 1795. The United Kingdom resisted through the ensuing centuries but did concede by minting the florin in 1849—a two shilling coin and thus one-tenth of a pound, which they did propose calling a dime but instead went with the former after due to its similarity in size and value to a Dutch coin already in circulation at the time. The florin is still used in neighbouring Aruba. The success of Bermuda’s transition and ease of currency exchange helped instill confidence that the same could be replicated for the whole of the Commonwealth.

ectlectrc pencil

Colossal curates a collection of outsider art (see previously here, here and here) created by a patient of State Lunatic Asylum, Number 3 of Nevada, Missouri, a series of over two hundred crayon and coloured pencil illustrations from James Edward Deeds, Jr named as a misspelled version of electric or eclectic.
Committed in 1936 to the care-home and working farm for the rest of his life, Deeds was diagnosed with schizophrenia and described as “boisterous and delusion,” and his sketches prise open a glimpse into how mental health was once handled—with two thousand capacity hospital closing in 1950.

don’t crash the pips

On the day in 1924 and broadcast on a daily basis since, the BBC first introduced the Greenwich Time Signal (previously) to play in and precisely mark the top of the hour.
First generated by breaking an electric circuit with the swinging pendulum of mechanical clock tolling the official time at the Royal Observatory before graduating to an electronic clock and eventually atomic calibration and production in house since 1990. The signal accounts for leap seconds by including a seventh tone, usually inserted just before the stroke of midnight. Due to inherent time lag in digital broadcasting (buffering), the signal is slipping in terms of accuracy when it comes to synchronization.

it was the courteous thing to do, considering the alternative

Calculated and scheduled surely by his minders as counter-programming to the outcome of the Iowa caucuses to diminish and attack his forerunning rival (though due to technical difficulties and a regrettable failure to scale, there was no clear winner and support has only been partially tallied) and on the eve of what's expected to be a hollow acquittal by his cowering party allies in the Senate, Trump’s dreadful and hopefully ultimate State of the Union address.

Nauseatingly what spare moments were not outright fabrications or empty platitudes were straight from a game show—Wheel of Fortune and not Jeopardy! and if the United States was as economically robust and security as Trump touts than there's surely enough to go around and provide affordable health care, education and meaningful employment for all and not just for consoling the few. The strength of the economy, what is attributable to Trump’s pandering decisions and crony-capitalism, comes at a very high cost to the poor, disadvantaged and to most of all the environment and our future well beyond US borders.

præceptor germaniæ

Poet, encyclopædist and military historian that went on to become the archbishop of Mainz, Hrabanus Maurus, is fêted on this day to mark the occasion of his death in 856.
One of the more important scholars of the ninth century Carolingian Renaissance, he compiled several treatises on education, grammar, hagiographies, Bible commentary as well as a comprehensive volume De rerum naturis along with quite a few hymns. In this miniature, Hrabanus is depicted with Alcuin of York, a teacher whom Charlemagne recruited for his court, presenting his compendium to Otgar of Mainz, Hrabanus’ predecessor bishop. Blessed but qualifying as a saint, Hrabanus has no specific patronage but we think the Educator of the Germans could provide intercession for Wikipedians and share duties among Don Bosco, Francis de Sales and John the Evangelist.