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As cases of COVID-19 again surge in the US after the rush to reopen, the European Union mulls adding America to its no-fly list—along with Brazil and Russia, all countries which have not only spectacularly failed in containing the pandemic within their borders, have through their neglect and mismanagement been net exporters of virus and its deleterious effects.
According to twenty-seven-member block’s epidemiological threshold for designating a country safe zone, all three still exhibit dangerous levels of new infections which threaten to overwhelm the healthcare infrastructure should more be imported. In mid-March, the Trump administration imposed a foreshadowingly reciprocal travel ban (since lifted) covering all of Europe, excepting the UK and Ireland, though that carve-out might get Britain similarly blocked. Talks are ongoing but failure to reach consensus could result in more internal border controls and restrictions on regional travel.

the battle of bamber bridge

On this evening in 1943, there was a mutiny among the ranks of segregated US service members stationed in the eponymous Lancashire village, provoked by racist attitudes and the lingering tension of reports of the distant Detroit riots (see also) sparked in part by mobilising the military and ramping up the manufacture of materiel. The village hosted a sustainment regiment of trucking and logistics engineering, a unit of the quartermaster corps, that was compromised exclusively of Black soldiers in one part of the village and another military police detachment in another, whom were white.
Accounts of hospitality and accommodation vary slightly but according to most sources, the villagers were welcoming and supportive of their quartermaster unit—and in any case, treated immensely better abroad than at home—and when American commanders insisted that a separate bar be established, all three publicans, landlords posted “Black Troops Only” signs. Tensions rose at Ye Old Hob Inn during a confrontation between an MP patrol and a private accused of being improperly dressed during leisure hours and at the pub without a pass. The brawl turned violent when the armed MPs turned their machine guns on the others, whom were forced to raid their unit’s armoury in self-defence. Locals defended the GIs at the pub, siding with them as being attacked unprovoked. Once the melee had ended by the next afternoon, one was dead and seven were injured, with court martial proceedings taken up immediately. Though the mutiny was censored from the press and not disclosed until decades later, institutional reforms were almost immediate, with commands restructured and racist officers removed from leadership positions, and while still segregated generally for years longer, morale for Black soldiers stationed in Europe markedly improved and MP patrols were integrated and required to have a diverse makeup.

pienone

As a prelude to the opera house’s 2020/2021season, earlier this week the quartet on stage of Barcelona’s El Gran Teatre del Liceu played to a full house (pienone, casa llena), ever seat filled symbolically with over two thousand house plants as the kingdom ravaged by the coronavirus enacts its measured plans for reopening. Non-vegetal fans were able to tune in remotely via live-stream and the plants donated by local florists and garden centres will be presented as gifts to front-line workers. This is lovely.
The players’s selection of song was a fitting elegy, a threnody called Crisantemi that renowned composer Puccini created for his friend Amadeo (*1845 – †1890) upon his sudden and premature death. Duke of Aosta, Amadeo was elected as king of Spain during that land’s interregnum, but frustrated by politics and intrigues two years into his reign, He declared the people of Spain to be ungovernable, abdicated and returned to Italy for a quieter life. Spain was a republic for a brief period afterwards. His son via his second marriage, Umberto, Count of Salemi, died during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

an itch to scratch

An ancient and obscure word from the Greek κνῆστις for spinal column (and colourfully for a cheese-grater), the word saw a revival around a decade ago when rediscovered by a linguist who read the Oxford English Dictionary (see previously) cover-to-cover and echoed by many contemporary authors as a nominee for the favourite words, acnestis refers to the part of an animal’s hide that it cannot reach itself to relieve an itch—and by extension a blindspot or an Achilles’ Heel.
In a fashion similar to its more recent rediscovery and celebration, the word first appeared in print in the late eighteenth century in a compilation by a medical lexicographer: Acneſtis — that part of the ſpine of the back, which reaches from the metaphrenon (an obsolete term for the dorsal side of the body), which is betwixt the ſhoulder blades, to the loins...this part ſeems to have been originally called ſo in quadrupeds only, beſause they cannot reach to ſcratch it.

enough said

First documented in the mid-seventeenth century and not apparent make it into the next in any appreciable publication and usually as a corollary to satisfaction, satisdiction signals the state of having spoken ones peace—that idiom itself deriving from Julia‘s aside in Two Gentlemen of Verona: “But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.”  We had never considered how its compliment meant sufficient making or doing in the terms of gratification or fulfillment and can also indicate repayment and vindication. 

6x6

ningaloo canyons: incredible footage from the previously unplumbed depths of the sea off western Australia

sea bass on a bed of contact lenses: hilarious mistranslation of French haute cuisine (see previously)

working lads institute: an antique gallery of portraits of those rehabilitating at the White Chapel Mission of London

cooper black: a look at the history behind the ubiquitous typeface, via Messy Nessy Chic, whose other finds are well worth checking out too

now is the time: raising the first new totem pole on Haida Gwaii (see also) in generations

geocities to neocities: the illustrious cabinet of hypertext curiosities of Mx van Hoorn, via Kicks Condor  

corrugated community: the vernacular architecture of Tīrau, New Zealand

blóðhundageng

Though there are numerous studies showing that our canine friends and others endowed with a super sense of smell can in fact be trained to sniff out diseases prior to the emergence of other signs or symptoms, we don’t know what to yet make of the extraordinary claim from the businesswoman and former First Lady (forsetafrúin) of Iceland, Dorrit Moussaieff (married to past president, the long-serving Ólafur Ragnar Grímmson), that her dog can detect COVID-19 and hopes to repatriate her pet to help at home. Ms Moussaieff was herself incapacitated with what turned out to be a fortunately mild case of the viral infection earlier in the year and believes that this ordeal helped hone Samson’s skills. Samson (not pictured but surely all good dogs) incidentally is not a stranger to the press, himself being a clone of Moussaieff’s beloved pet Sámur.

daddy issues

Via Language Log, we learn that Chinese netizens have cultivated a term to call out chauvinism and paternalistic behaviour, invoked in a similar spirit to accusing someone, albeit in a less gendered way despite the name, of mansplaining—with diē wèi (爹味, literally dad flavour).
While in the West some might find such withering words to carry power and pride for moving beyond (and sometimes rightfully so, though none of us should be so quick to label others less liberated or enlightened lest we remain ignorant of our own ample shortcomings) their parochial tendencies, the feminist advocate tracking this trend believes it to be more of an internet catharsis and a way of commiserating online (whose power also shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed) over unwelcome and unsolicited impositions and is not likely to affect society at large. Speaking of the above equivalence, mansplaining was inspired by a universal phenomenon described by author and essayist Rebecca Solnit who was approached by a man at a social event who’d heard she was a writer, to which she began talking about her latest publication on the topic of Eadweard Muybridge, whereupon the man cut off his interlocutor proclaiming that he had heard of about a comprehensive edition of the life of Muybridge that had come out recently—failing to entertain the likely fact that he was addressing the book’s author. Describing the experience without having the precise term, the internet soon provided one, falsely credited with its coinage, Solnit insofar as she can speak for mansplaining regrets that it is a harsher condemnation on men and their perceived mindset than she meant it to be.