Via Maps Mania, we are directed to an engaging and impactful look at the devastation that Australia’s wildfires brought at the beginning of 2020 in the form of this interactive scrollytelling presentation that shares stories of recovery, prevention and links to the toll it has taken on 119 representative plants and animal species, whom may face extinction without human intervention. Though 119 is the number for firefighters and emergency services in many other jurisdictions, it’s triple zero you want to dial on the continent.
Sunday, 16 August 2020
flora, fauna, fire
Saturday, 15 August 2020
stays these couriers
Though never an official motto, the phrase from Herodotus about another determined set of postal workers, the Persians, unparalleled in Antiquity, the words are stirring and befitting such a beleaguered though indefatigable group.
Knowing that he cannot win honestly and outright or retain a controlling majority of the legislature, Trump is dismantling the US mail to stop postal balloting—with the added bonus of ensuring knock-on delays downstream, for people that need to receive rent or pension cheques through the mail and potentially deadly deferrals for those refiling prescriptions. Though there was turmoil beforehand over the United States’ leaving of the Universal Postal Union, this new phase was not a necessary consequence and the actions being undertaken now could not be characterised as anything else but sabotage.
gumball machine
blogoversary – we are twelve
Since we last checked-in, here are the most popular posts:
10: An article about the US Bill of Rights—originally twelve amendments to the constitution. 
I am curious to see how this list might stack up to the next. We love you all and best wishes for a happier and more auspicious balance of 2020.
ars amatoria
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!”
Friday, 14 August 2020
bier and bookcase
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.
psalterium moguntinum
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.
arnold van soissons
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.
