ihf

We are really enthralled and excited about every last detail of the new promotional campaign for Egypt’s 2021 hand-ball tournament of champions that’s receiving due hype and cheer a year out. The logo is a stylised ankh, the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol meaning key of life, and the official national team mascot is the sky god Horus. Check out more from Super Punch at the link above.

rennfahrerin

Passing away in her adopted home of Sweden on this day in 1990 (*1901), accomplished automobile racer Clara Eleonore “Clärenore” Stinnes, accompanied by film-maker Carl-Alex Söderström and a two-person engineering crew, became the first person (see this counter-claim) to circumnavigate the globe by car. In just over two years, Stinnes crossed the start/finish line in Berlin on 24 June 1929, having completed a journey of over forty-seven thousand kilometres—with the aid of ferries—crossing frozen Lake Baikal, the Gobi, transversing the Andres and through Central America to the US and Canada and finding herself in many spots with no navigable roads to speak of. The event, with a prize of a hundred-thousand Reichsmarks, was sponsored by Adler, Aral and Bosch, titans of the German automotive industry.  After the round-the-world journey, Stinnes and Söderström wed and spent many happy years together on their farm in southern Sweden.

abbots bromley horn dance

Though cancelled this year due to the pandemic, customarily the eleventh century ritual folk dance—whose current iteration involves characters adorned with reindeer antlers, Maid Marian (Robin Hood’s love interest), a Village Idiot and a hobby horse is held on the day after Wakes Sunday, the first one falling after 4 September—traditionally an end of summer funfair introduced by Gregory the Great to transfer devotions from pagan idols to patron saints and preserved as a summer holiday through the Industrial Revolution as an homage to trade guilds. Academic research into the history of Staffordshire believe that the dance itself was a form of enchantment—sympathetic magic to ensure a good hunting season. The headdress used generation after generation has been radio-carbon dated back almost a millennium old where reindeer could last be found on the British Isles. An alternate kit of regular red deer antlers are used for when the troupe goes on tour. 

fränkische schweiz

Located in the uppermost pocket of the Franconian Jura and originally bearing the name the Muggendorfer Hills, we had the privilege of touring the region previously “rediscovered” and romantically marketed at the end of the eighteenth century by a couple of law students from the University of Erlangen who wrote about enthusiastically, followed by a 1820 volume by a local historian who coined the new endonym die kleine Schweiz and now had the chance to see it again for a few fresh impressions over the weekend.
First we entered in County Kulmbach the market town of Wonsees with its medieval Felsenburg (rock castle) Fortress Zwernitz, hewn into the dolomite stone, originally the family seat of elevated peasants called the Walpoten—a so-called ministerialis line, that is serfs raised up as servitors and agents into positions of responsibility within the class system of the Middle Ages.
While not technically free and independent, these families held social power and could cultivate their estates and pass along their wealth to the next generation, with equal status accorded to men and women.
Beneath the tower and keep is a seventeenth century cliff garden called Sanspareil landscaped around some strange rock formations and with oriental follies—reminding H and I of the gardens at Veitshöchsheim or Schwetzingen.


Next, following the Burgen- und the Fränkischen Bierstraße (the region having the one of the highest concentrations of traditional breweries in Europe) we came to a village called Aufseß, named for the stream that flows through it, dominated by a castle and chapel with a clutch of some pretty fancy chickens in the property opposite the courtyard who were eager to have their pictures taken by us paparazzi.

With a few detours through Plankenfels and Waischenfeld, we stopped at Burg Rabenstein—a well-preserved Spornburg, a spur castle which is constructed where natural topography aides in its defences that also featured a quite good restaurant, a dripstone cavern and a bird-of-prey demonstration. The intact castle is one of the best conserved—most are ruins but romantic ones—along the route and was originally also in the capable hands of the Rabenstein ministerialis family, who were eventually able to buy the property and ennoble themselves. The castle appears as the main stage for the 1995 wildly popular PC game Gabriel Ritter sequel “The Beast Within”—I was not familiar but I think it was like the equivalent of the King’s Quest saga.
After securing a campsite (we had miscalculated a little and instead of the season’s end like we thought it was busier than expected) in the Veldensteiner Forest outside of Pottenstein, we returned to Gößweinstein with its Burg and basilica minor designed by Balthasar Neumann as a pilgrimage destination.
Our last stop on the way back to the campsite, we drove back through Pottenstein and visited the town, crisscrossed by canals, more fowl not shy of the camera and a row of sleeping ducks (I did not know they did this) and dominated by towering karst towers.
The town is absolutely awash with roses of all sorts; learn more of the story behind that and Saint Elizabeth of Thüringen at the link up top.
We looked at the rock formations from another perspective in the Tüchersfeld neighbourhood of Pottenstein on the way out of Little Switzerland and on our way home.
While not on the itinerary, our last impression for this visit was of the ruin of Burg Neideck, towering above the Wiesen river valley and considered the icon of the region, just outside of the town of Muggendorf

a pox on both your houses

We’ve covered the vain aspirations of Trump to be featured on the cover of Time magazine previously and how that has translated into a lot of press albeit the infamous type, and now with the regular feature, Your Daily Donald (the gratuitous gluttons for punishment we are) Everlasting Blört directs us to the most consequential and clarion one yet—the one for the 17 August edition that illustrates the cover story of how the pandemic has transformed the election and democracy in America.

galleria stradale del san gottardo

Holding the title of world’s longest road tunnel for two decades before being overtaken by the Lærdalstunnelen in Vestland, the Gotthard Road Tunnel between the cantons of Ticino and Uri, linking the highlands to southern Switzerland beneath the namesake massif opened to traffic on this day in 1980.
After taking more than a decade to construct and given the high monetary cost and the nineteen fatalities of workers, the public balked at the fact there was no supplemental toll for it (the tunnel being covered by the mandatory vignettes for use of Swiss motorways), sighing that “The Italians built it, the Germans use it and the Swiss pay for it.” The inaugural vehicle was a school bus.

early and often

Whilst what Trump advised supporters to do upon mailing in ballots only serves to further his narrative that the postal system is unreliable (the encore performance for rubbishing public confidence in the efficacy of medical science and the undoing of suffering and hard-won gains) and would needlessly endanger poll-workers as well as constituents by causing unnecessary foot-traffic (and delaying egress to already over-crowded and under-served communities) by going to one’s physical polling place to ensure that it had in fact been received and tabulated—and if not vote in person—was not technically urging people to vote twice, effectively it comes across as such. Even if one could verify in real-time that one’s vote had been counted, the disruption and drain on an already fragile may prove overwhelming, encouraging the assembled crowd to test the system as Trump made an appearance in Wilmington, North Carolina to proclaim it a World War II Heritage City just before corroborated revelations came forward on Trump’s history of disparaging remarks regarding the fallen, service members and veterans.   Please vote if you are eligible, but needless to say only once.

7x7

cut-throat competition: gig workers are tethering their smartphones in trees to gain an edge of miilliseconds over others for a limited number of contracts

the hackney year: season after season of recorded back garden bird song and other sonic gems via Things Magazine

october surprise: a cynical campaign ploy threatens to erode public trust in science and medicine

a transparent corridor in the air: a design firm completes the longest glass-bottomed suspension bridge along the approach to Three Gorges

ascii art: artists creates “typicitions” on his vintage typewriter

snitches get stitches: the prohibition against social gatherings are polarising college campuses

eula: monopsonistic on-line retail giant deploys union-busting tactics to perpetuate myth of “freelance” work-force and maintain their impressment