the nightly (12. 433)

Via Nag on the Lake and Web Curios, we are directed to an internet radio station fronting a music appreciation society celebrating a selection the vintage, obscure, vaguely gloomy and positively atmospheric songs and film scores, chiefly from the 1930 to the 1970s with some real jewels from Italian and Japanese cinema. Moody but not maudlin, there are over four thousand titles in circulation and growing that are instantly transporting and transfixing, evoking the hard-scrabbling and noir, taking one to those liminal spaces and liminal hours.

kriegsgräberstätte (12. 432)

Scheduled to be in Bonn for the G7 summit during the week of the fortieth anniversary of V-E Day celebrations, US president Ronald Reagan agreed, as a demonstration of the strength and steadfastness of West German-American relations—feeling he owed Helmut Kohl a photo-opportunity for the public and political backlash the chancellor suffered for conceding to host ballistic weapons—to visit a military cemetery logistically close to the joint airbase of Bitburg. Although planned months in advance, the ceremony intended to commemorate the end of hostilities and the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht to Allied Forces, the event was overshadowed by controversy once discovered that forty-nine of the two thousand German soldiers interred at the site at Kolmeshöhe were members of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel, drawing condemnation from Jewish activists and others worldwide. An impromptu and unscheduled visit to the memorial Bergen-Belsen was added to the itinerary to limit the leaders’ time at the cemetery, a stop which met with resistance by the president’s handlers as it might awaken old memories. The botched execution on both sides strained relations between the White House and the Chancellery, both sides blaming each other and not helped by Reagan’s statement equating those “drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis” suffered “just as surely as the victims of the victims of in the concentration camps.” In response, the Ramones recorded the single “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” in June of that year, the co-starring chimpanzee of “Bedtime for Bonzo” employed as an epithet for the former actor.

synchronoptica

one year ago: alien autopsy (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

eight years ago: a natural battery spanning a Norwegian valley, Valerian and the City of a 1000 Planets plus a clever and effective flyer

nine years ago: on tour in Cornwall 

ten years ago: The Meaning of Liff, more links to enjoy, populuxe design plus assorted trivia that sounds untrue

eleven years ago: fetishising fruit

11x11 (12. 431)

hot, cold, clash and burn: some performances from candidates for the 2025 Dance Your PhD contest with real EuroVision vibes—see previously 

man in motion: a biography of Eadweard Muybridge (previously) as a graphic novel   

pc connection: the raccoon mascot that made the catalogue stand out amongst industry uniformity—via Nag on the Lake   

popemobile: the pontiff’s conveyance used for his 2014 visit to Bethlehem to be converted into a mobile health clinic for Gaza   

oaf of office: arguing that due process is cumbersome, Trump defers to his legal team on whether it his duty to uphold the constitution 

pamflyt compiled of cheese, contayninge the differences, nature, qualities, and goodnes, of the same: an early Renaissance book on the staple food digitised and made available to the public

architecture of choice: AI buttons and the fat-finger economy pushing redesign and showhorning of non-options into everything   

sustained presence: Israel expands operations, evictions in the occupied territory   

papabili: the College of Cardinals’ report and coverage of the upcoming conclave—via Web Curios 

mingkwai: the rediscovery of an incredible antique mechanical typewriter prototype for printing Chinese characters—via Neatorama—with a video demonstration 

marge inalia: alert the grammar police, the Errorist strikes again

synchronoptica

one year ago: Expo '74 (with synchronoptica), the Cabbage Patch Kids’ maternity ward, assorted links worth revisiting plus the Grammies

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, lampooning mid-morning television, doggie bags plus election by Borda count

eight years ago: potential jail time for protesting the US attorney general, the Cornell carillon plays a tribute to the Grateful Dead plus even more links

nine years ago: gorillas sing little tunes as they eat, maps of Middle Earth, a market hall in Rotterdam plus a popular French tonic wine

ten years ago: Hee-Haw and the cancellation of Star Trek plus utopian thinking

fedifragous (12. 430)

Borrowing from the obsolete Latin foedifragus, the rarely used term which has occasion to be brought back into common parlance as the adjectival form for faithless, perfidious or treacherous in the sense of liable to break treaties or contracts or alliances.

pressroom (12. 429)

For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the launch of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (see previously), REM is releasing a remix of its classic track remastered by long time collaborator Garrett “Jacknife” Lee—renowned Irish music producer who has also worked with the Cars, U2, Weezer, Taylor Swift and others as a charity EP to benefit the defunded organisation’s reporting and outreach at a time when the work of public broadcasting is under assault and existential threat—see also. The call to action coinciding with World Press Freedom Day (previously), according to lore and liner notes, the 1981 song from the group that amicably disbanded in 2011 has nothing to do with the outlet—they just liked the title. “Decide yourself if radio’s gonna stay.”  More from Nag on the Lake at the link up top.

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons

taubertal: rothenburg ob der tauber (12. 427)

 

Well preserved and one of only four cities in Germany with intact medieval defensive walls, and recognised as a free and immediate Reichstadt—Heinrich V appointed a nephew of the Hohenstaufen branch after the original dynasty died out in the twelfth century as a successor to the counts’ property—Rothenburg ob der Tauber was threatened with destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic League field marshal Johann t’Sercalaes, County of Tilly, fresh from a string of victories, wanting to quarter forty-thousand troops there, much to the the resistance of the populace, prepared for a siege rather than takeover in pitched battle. The popular though certainly apocryphal legend of the Meistertrunk gives the account that Tilly would spare the city and its governing council if any one of them could drink a flagon (roughly a gallon, three and a half litres) of wine in a single sitting. Burgermeister Georg Nusch was up to the task—which is heroic enough but does not seem like an impossible ask and the fact that there was no contemporaneous chronicle suggests rather the city lost its strategical importance due to a bout of plague which led to the preservation of its seventeenth century state. Nonetheless the feat is commemorated hourly with a clockwork recreation from the Ratstrinkstube near city hall. Romanced by landscape painters from the nineteenth century onwards, Rothenburg gained special significance in ideological terms as representative of Heimat with many field trips there organised through the Kraft durch Freude programme.

 

The city was destroyed by one-third, sparing the oldest parts, during an Allied bombardment campaign but rebuilt true to form—see also—the cityscape was also used in the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the inspiration for fictional hometown of the animated feature Pinocchio, with the Plönlein, the small square at the intersection of two streets at a fountain, being one of the more photogenic spots. On the way back out, through the former Jewish quarter and back over the hill, we learnt that the future pontiff Francis had stayed here for several months in 1986 whilst learning German at the local Goethe Institute chapter.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: the beautifully dissociative nature of the Japanese language (with synchronoptica), Saturation 70 plus the US National Day Reason

seven years ago: commemorating the Berlin Airlift, humorist Grant Snider plus animated sketching lessons

eight years ago: the origins of the .mp3 format, disaster capitalism, the matte paintings of Star Wars plus the geographic centre of the EU shifts

nine years ago: an animated filmography plus food colouring’s unqualified reputation

ten years ago: an avatar-making app, Fearbook! plus divided America/divided Germany

taubertal: detwang (12. 426)

For the long Labour Day weekend (see also), H and I returned to the Tauber valley and stayed at a campground just outside of the Kirchdorf Detwang, just a leisurely twenty minute walk along the river from Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

After setting up camp, we discovered the little village on the crossroads of the Franconian Marienweg and the Jakobsweg (the pilgrimage trail of el Camino de Santiago de Compostela) to be quite a historic jewel itself. From the Old High German for someone’s field (=Det’s Wang), it was first mentioned in a lease contract in 1335 when the local chapter of the Teutonic Knights, bought later in the same century by the imperial city of Rothenburg. The Gothic parish church of Sts Peter and Paul was founded in the tenth century and features an altar retable hewn from wood by Tilman Riemenschneider (see previously).

 

The small neighbouring castle is from the end of the 1200s and was built for the hereditary office of Reichsküchenmeister (magister coquinae, Master of the Kitchen) held by the ennobled lords von Nordenberg, kept in the family through the end of the Holy Roman Empire. There was an ensemble of historic houses and mills, formerly the site of a working cloister.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Carl Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature (with synchronoptica), the BASIC programming language (1964) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: ancient debt-forgiveness, a roasting in the press, more links to enjoy plus Witchcraft through the Ages

eight years ago: no lapse in appropriations, five decades of IKEA catalogues, more Brexit omnishambles, an animated version of the Rex Factor plus Trump’s Diet Coke buzzer

nine years ago: film set crossovers, strategic cheese stockpiles, a weasel sabotages CERN, WiFi rustico, letter-carriers lend a helping hand in Finland plus a history of trademark applications

ten years ago: comment is free, a stationary bike for washing up plus universal