10: An article about the US Bill of Rights—originally twelve amendments to the constitution. 
From BBC Culture, we learn that classic art is not always just academic soft-core pornography, it can also be high-brow, heuristic potty humour, as exemplified in Titian’s masterpiece Bacchus and Ariadne (see previously)—capturing the moment of love-at-first-site when the god of revelry and his entourage chances on a freshly heartbroken maiden abandoned on the island of Naxos by her beloved Theseus rendered in a transfixing image that nonetheless has an underlying allegory that includes all the corporeal awkwardness that we’d otherwise choose to suspend.
In the foreground directly beneath Bacchus dismounting his chariot born by a pair of regal cheetahs, there is a child satyr and a caper flower, the twain representing the curse of excessive flatulence and the carminative remedy for it. Given that contemporaries also had truck with this patois, one needs to take this symbolism into account when appreciating the diorama and wonder what other mortal perils that even the body of a god might be prone to—especially one of perpetual drunkenness. Looking less relieved for being rescued the longer that one studies her, John Keats cites Ariadne in his poem “Ode to a Nightingale” written when the work was first acquired by the National Gallery—“Away! away! For I will fly to thee [the ship of Theseus still visible in the harbour], Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards!”
As seen advertised (right) in Harper’s classifieds in 1991 for custom-built models and then as a similar DYI concept with send-away instructions tailored for one’s measurements about two decades later after the London Design Festival in 2009—recently featured on Weird Universe and Pasa Bon! respectively—I wonder if the next iteration of furniture, shelving unit that transforms into a casket to convey one to the here-after might not be done for its reintroduction soon. What do you make of these morbid but practical design suggestions? The handles and decorative, devotional ornaments are themselves called fittings or “coffin furniture”—not to be confused with other movable furnishings that are coffin-shaped, whereas preparing the inside is called “trimming.” Having the foresight to display one’s future funerary box is certainly a conversation-piece.
The second major book printed with movable type in the West and the first by printers and former colleagues Johann Fust and Petrus Schรถffer after the unamicable split from the workshop of Johannes Gutenberg, the Mainz Psalter, an anthology of poems, prayers and other devotional material like a liturgical calendar, a guide to the saints and a good primer to impart literacy commissioned by the archbishop, contained many innovations that are still resonant and relevant in the publication industry.
It bears a printer’s mark and colophon that gives the date of publication as the Eve of the Feast of the Assumption [14 August] 1457—the date, dateline and dedication of the Bible being handwritten for each copy. The work employs three colours of ink and contains images and mixed sized text on the same pages, a technical feat—as well as parallel music score for selected psalms.
Born near Brabant and serving as a soldier of fortune before settling at a great abbey outside of the ancient city of Soissons as a hermit hoping to fade into retirement, Saint Arnold (*1040 – †1087)was elevated by the monastic community to abbot—an honour he only reluctantly accepted, persuaded to the return to take up office by an encounter with a wolf. Later, after assuring that his parish was in capable hands, Arnold returned to West Flanders and established an abbey of his own in the town of Oudenburg, there perfecting his skills in brewing beer—which, despite ignorance of the germ theory of pathology, he happily evangelised for and rightly touted as safer than water. Arnold, who is venerated on this day, composed a blessing thusly:
Benedic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
Bless, O Lord, this creation beer, that you hvet been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain—that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of your holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. &c. Amen.
During one outbreak of the plague, an untold number of residents were able to avoid infection through sticking to hygienic beer—untold and unbeknownst as is the case with most effective public health interventions because there’s not the visible means of tracking success to compare with that of failure and efforts are hampered by the backfire effect. Arnold is the patron of hops-harvesters and brewers and his iconographic depictions include him holding a bishop’s mitre and a mash rake.
really simple syndication: Tedium explores early electronic news and digital services (see previously here, here and here)
let’s go out to the lobby: a 1979 drive-in cinema sci-fi concession advertisement
heracleum sosnovsky: creative interventions to control the toxic, invasive import known as “Stalin’s Revenge”
Via Miss Cellania’s Links, we are transported to the geographical exclave of Port Roberts, Washington on the southern tip of the Tsawwassen peninsula to see how its residents, isolated from the USA by a forty kilometre drive through Canada, are faring during the pandemic and the border closures and restrictions on movements put in place.
Though some accounts attribute the creation of the American enclave to an oversight in the Oregon Treaty of 1846 between the US and Britain that delineated the border, others frame it as a deliberative strategic decision with questions of ceding the territory never resolved. Gratefully, the remoteness has kept the community relatively free of infection and contagion despite the rank ineptitude of American in general. Rather than conferring an advantage militarily (so far), the outpost played an outsized role during each nation’s respective periods of prohibition. We wonder how other liminal places—Gibraltar, Bรผsingen am Hochrhein, Germany only accessible through Switzerland, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Ceuta and others—might be affected by this health crisis and how borders might be redrawn afterward.
