Brought to the stage in Mรผnchen in operatic form on this date in 1811 as the premiรจre work of Peter Josef von Lindpainter (*1791 – †1856) the figure associated with Demeter was a popular subject of the prior decades. Seeking her abducted daughter Persephone in the guise of an old woman, calling herself Doso, Demeter wanted to repay the hospitality she received from the by making the titular young prince into an immortal and being nursemaid to Demophรถon (given the tough name, meaning “killer of men”), the king’s son by Metanira. To realise her plan to turn him into a god, Demeter anointed the infant with ambrosia and nightly placed him into the palace hearth to burn away his mortal spirit. His mother walked in one evening to witness this ritual and reacted like any mother would to the sight of her baby in the fireplace among the burning logs—which annoyed Demeter who had to abort the immortalisation process over the interruption. Though unscathed but still subject to decrepitude and death, Demophรถon acquired immortality of a sorts through a hero cult and enduring fame. As a consolation to the family—having failed in her first act of kindness, Demeter taught his older brother Triptolemus (threefold-warrior) the art of agriculture, which he spread across the Greek world. Lindpainter’s most successful opera, Der Vampyr, was also another popular theme and debuted in Stuttgart two decades later.
Garrotted and burned at the stake for witchcraft on this day in 1591 on the order of James VI and said to haunt the halls of Holyrood as a naked ghost, Agnes Sampson was a healer and midwife and one of the more notable defendants of the well documented North Berwick witch trails.
The Scottish king inspired by his experience in the court of Denmark-Norway, visiting his in-laws on the occasion of marrying Anne of Denmark, and accounts of witch-hunting and practicing the dark arts—convinced during a fraught return voyage that a curse was responsible for the stormy passage. Subsequent arrests and interrogations conducted by the king himself in a specially convened tribunal was covered by a contemporary pamphleteer in the Newes from Scotland, which contained proceedings and quoted Sampson’s litany of confessions, implicating others and admitting with a seemingly taunting air that she had tried to drown the newly-weds and another had fashioned a charm out of a toad to make the king impotent. Reportedly James had been willing to declare Sampson innocent until her final confession which detailed the nuptial night of the James and Anne in Oslo with accuracy only one in communion with the devil could know. The writer with the by-line, James Carmichael, of the reportage later advised James on his other famous book (besides his patronage for the Bible), Dรฆmonologie.
In continuing efforts to reduce transmission errors in signalling and optimise efficiency, we are directed towards a new approach to devising a radiotelephony spelling alphabet (see previously here, here and here) by placing each representative letter-phrase in a context that can be summoned up to make sure interlocutors understand one another. Though a draft version, we can already see its potential for reducing—or perhaps reinforcing—confusion.
With some polishing, we think it could be a viable alternative and did enjoy the observance quite a bit that compared the method to Cockney Rhyming Slang with the example illustrating the convention that the corresponding pet-name is an unvoiced consonance—one’s teeth being ‘Hampsteads’ from Hampstead Heath.
We thoroughly enjoyed this review and overview of how new media and technological innovation influenced and informed Eastern Europe through the lens of the last years of the Polish People’s Republic.
The efforts on the part of the authorities could not outpace and eventually lagged far behind ever more ingenious and widespread means of implementation that circumvented attempts of censorship or suppression (see also), eventually conceding to the inevitable. Considering the role of John Paul II in social and civic reforms, the account of young priests using new media as teaching aids and for screening—cassette cinemas—films that were banned in the theatres and helping to carve out a refuge from the state regime. The image is a still from a 1988 adaptation of Pan Kleks (Mister Inkblot) and his magical academy. More from the Calvert Journal at the link above.
Things Magazine directs our attention to directed to a thoroughgoing and informative appreciation of the engineering and triangulation of technology, style and their limitations, constraints that have gone into the Apple Watch, including a lesson of the anatomy of classic
watchmaking (lugs, bezel, face and hands) and a historical inventory of the iconic dials that inform and inspire Apple’s gallery, including the “error-proof” California Dial trialled by Rolex, the evolving chronograph with an array of complications, diving watches and models coordinated with Greenwich Mean Time, introduced by Pan Am realising that their pilots and crew needed to reference multiple time-zones.
The 1957 East German children’s film Das singende, klingende Bรคumchen based on the folktale tale “Hurleburlebutz” compiled by the Brothers Grimm was serialised for television by the BBC in the mid-sixties, the import, with audiences unprepared for the foreign and fairy tale character of the production left an indelible mark on a generation of impressionable viewers, though well-made and quite beloved elsewhere.
The plot, categorised in the 1812 collection as Kinder- und Hausmรคrchen 66, involves a beautiful but rather haughty princess who rebuffs the overtures of a prince, rejecting his proposal lest he brings her the mythical “singing ringing tree.” After much searching and tribulations, the prince discovers the tree but it is in the domain of an evil dwarf, who makes the prince a bargain. The prince is offered the tree on the condition that if the princess still refuses to marry him, he will be transformed into a bear and in the service of the dwarf. Because the tree only performs in the presence of true love, the princess is not impressed with this tree that neither sings nor rings.
The prince turns into a bear and is compelled to return to the dwarf’s lair, taking the tree with him. Still obsessed with this tree, the princess dispatches her father the king to find it. The king encounters the prince bear, who gives him the tree on the condition that the king comes back to him with the first thing the king sees upon his return. Naturally it’s the princess who is now also under the power of the dwarf. Releasing how insufferable she is, the dwarf casts a spell on the princess to take away her beauty. The princess and the bear gradually fall in love, the princess reforming her selfish ways and breaks both their curses—with the singing, ring tree announcing the triumph of true love.
After being sidelined with the rollout of the new design until no earlier than 2028 by the racism of the previous administration (see also), US President Biden promises to fast-track the redesign of the $20 bill to feature abolitionist and Underground Railroad engineer Harriet Tubman.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki referred further lines of questioning to the Treasury, preambling her statement with how it's important that “our money reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the $20 note would certainly reflect that. The current face of the most circulated bill, Andrew Jackson, whom was quite the monster for championing slavery and a litany of other things, would not be wholly with the redesign excised but rather remanded to the backside.
