set as background

Via Present /&/ Correct (a lot of new posts here to explore), the BBC shares dozens of high quality production, continuity shots taken from a host of sets from classic sitcoms, news rooms and variety shows absent actors and presenters to ponder over the detail and familiar artefacts and use as the backdrop for one’s video calls. There’s the dining room and bar from Fawlty Towers, various Doctor Who scenes, the interiors from Good Neighbours (Good Life), EastEnders, ‘Allo ‘Allo and the pictured, well-stocked refrigerator from Absolutely Fabulous plus much more.  What’s your favourite?

lemuralia

Celebrated discontinuously on today, the eleventh and the thirteenth, the Roman performed annual rites into order to exercise malevolent spirits of the dead that had taken up residence in their house during the previous year whom might be lured away with offerings of beans.
The Vestal priestesses whose chief patronage was for hearth and home, cultivating a sacred fire that symbolically burned for all and was never to be extinguished, baked all the mola salsa used throughout the year, salted flour cakes that were much like communion wafers and were burnt offerings themselves as well as given to sacrificial animals—for the whole city and for Lemuralia made a special batch made with the first ears of grain of the season to help appease the restive dead. According to contemporary scholarship by Ovid, the observance was derived from an older ritual called Remuria instituted by the founder of Rome himself to atone for the death of his brother, Remus.
Incantations included the head of the household (paterfamilias) rising at midnight and pattering around the chambers barefooted and tossing black beans over his or her shoulder, favomancy—see above, and repeating Haec ego mitto—his redimo meque meosque fabis (These I dispatch; with these beans I redeem me and mine) with the rest of the family and domestics banging pots and pans. Though All Saints and All Souls Day for Western Christianity has been advanced toward the end of October and beginning of November (Halloween right now? Yes please), for the Eastern Catholic and Oriental Orthodox church, they are celebrated on the Friday following Easter as perhaps a syncretism of this Roman custom. Because of the vacating of noxious ghosts, the month was considered an inauspicious time to wed, and hence the proverb: Mense Maio malae nubunt—Bad girls get married in May.

russergrensa

Named after the first two saints canonised after the Kievan Rus adopted Christianity as the state religion Boris and Gleb, Roman and David—sons of Vladimir the Great, the Russian exclave of Borisoglebsky (Борисоглебский) on the Norwegian bank of the of the Pasvik river, beyond the Arctic circle came to our attention through a travelogue from February covering the annual friendship festival filed to the Calvert Journal.
As a celebration in microcosm of the experiment and showcase of open borders (previously) during the Cold War, the Barents Spektakel marks a détente of nearly two months in 1965 of cultural exchange—plus some freer-flowing vodka not subject to Norway’s alcohol monopoly, with the settlement isolated (see also) due to an oversight in negotiating the borders after a peace settlement between Finland and the Russian Empire having become a platform to highlight Soviet technological and industrial prowess. In later years the site of a few tense standoffs, since 2014, border controls are stricter than before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the festival was not held in the off-limits community of Boris Gleb and only observed in the neighbouring Norwegian town Kirkenes. Hopefully one day tensions will dissipate and the communities can once again celebrate together. Learn more about the history of the border at the link up top.

8x8

it’s-a me francis: an upcoming immersive papal simulator

what wizardry is this: augmented reality copy-and-paste

in like flynn: weaponised US Justice Department dismisses case against former National Security Adviser for lying to FBI about Russian connections

the great realisation: or, why we say hindsight is 2020

4f: new rules prohibit individuals who have recovered from corona virus infections from enlisting in the US military

logic gate: cookie-consent walls ruled to violate GDPR (previously)

nation-building: a profile of the Home Shopping Club mercenaries that tried to topple the government in Venezuela (previously)

canvasing: though unable to visit constituents in person, one representative is island-hopping on-line

smrt in pogreb josipa broza tita

Four days after his death in Ljubljana due to complications during surgery to correct circulation problems in his legs, the government of Yugoslavia held the largest state funeral in history for president Josip Broz Tito (*1892), drawing guests—kings, princes, presidents and ministers—from nearly every polity in the world on this day in the streets of Belgrade in 1980.
Tens of thousands filed past his casket and paid their solemn, earnest respect for two and a half days prior to arrival of the foreign dignitaries to the only leader the citizens of the independent communist county had known. Leaders and delegates in attendance were from both aligned and non-aligned countries and both sides geographically and ideologically of the Iron Curtain. Amid the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and facing re-election, the US president opted not to attend, instead sending his mother Lilian Carter with vice-president Walter Mondale. A ceremony of pomp and fanfare to celebrate the progress the Tito’s leadership had brought for the worker, the occasion was also an opportunity for building networks, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany met with his East German counterpart and Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Margaret Thatcher met with the leadership of Zambia, Italy and Romania, trying to rally international condemnation over said invasion. The leader was interned in a mausoleum in Belgrade that became known as the House of Flowers (Hiša cvetja, Kuća cvijeća, Кућа цвећа, Куќа на цвеќето)—the space that was a covered garden outside of Tito’s auxiliary office internally referred to as the “flower shop.”

sip

With all proceeds and exposure redirected back to the original artists and the host studios, a new gallery in Boston—called Shelter in Place—has held no less than fifteen exhibitions in the last month, broadcast to appreciative visitors for a virtual experience though the new assessions are very real acquisitons, with this miniature loft space, like a light-box, created to display maquettes—that is a scale-model or rough draft of a sculpture or other work of art.
Such tiny versions, also called bozzetti are collectable in their own right and speciality of a museum in Pietrasanta and the size of which can be executed from a desk or tabletop, are dropped off with the curatorial team for showing. Local artists are being showcased currently, but in the future they may have a call for submissions via parcel posts and other miniature galleries could also always pop-up. Much more to see at Hyperallergic at the link up top.

wir sind die roboter

Our friends over at Open Culture have assembled a nice retrospective appreciation of the recently departed Florian Schneider-Esleben (RIP, *1947)—co-founder of the formative and highly influential electronic group Kraftwerk, adding to a mounting tributes and eulogies from performers of all genres that owe a debt of gratitude to his music and vision. Much more at the links above.

corn dollies

At the crafty crossroads where creativity meets cult, Messy Nessy Chic presents a thoroughgoing history and how-to on cereal and straw art—referencing the ancient customs of the harvest (which continue into modern times) that saved the first (see also) and last sheaves of grain to fashion them into corn maidens or matrons that would winter with the family, exchanged as gifts during Yule to be ploughed into the furrows of the next season’s planting to ensure the continuity of abundance. Straw is worked, plaited, woven, spun according to centuries old tradition into some rather fantastic monuments, costumes and handicrafts—certainly worth admiring and wondering about their meaning and power, if not trying to create charms of our own.