sola fide

Schiller, Bach, Mozart and Luther, among others, are claimed by many, many towns and villages—to know Marx peered at that cliff from this observation platform or Brahms performed in that church—to the extent that it is always interesting and more than just trivia to have one’s biography filled in with disparate and renowned details, but sometimes too many places asserting their historical personage privileges can make one lose sight of the pinnacle moments. I have seen Luther in captivity in the Wartburg, his academic career in Eisenach and Erfurt, the nunnery where his future wife grew up in Brehna by Leipzig, the trials in Augsburg and Worms. All of these places are interesting and definitely not self-promoting tourists’ traps with specious connections to fame, but I often have forgotten it is in Wittenberg where Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door. While the antique Luther monuments are being cleaned for later anniversary celebrations, meanwhile the city of Wittenberg has set up this ersatz collection of garden gnomes on the market square, perhaps in a bid to regain exclusive Luther privileges. Some people are critical of this display, saying it is frivolous or unbecoming, but I think these colorful statues are more accessible to the people than some frightfully stern old bronze monolith and needs no justification.

tagesblatt

H and I made a short trip to Leipzig and there were a few fun and out of the ordinary items on the agenda.  We attended an organ concert performed at the Nikolaikirche, played incidentally on the largest instrument in Saxony.  The ancient church itself is famous for hosting more recently popular demonstrations against the East German regime and helped spur on the reunification.  It was relaxing and meditative to listen there sitting in the pews, focused on the music but with one's back to the performer, up in the rafters.  These two singular cherubs were the only figural decoration on the ceiling, and reminded me of that pop-culture, meme of the two angels that was remixed as those two grumpy old men, Statler and Waldorf, who heckled the Muppet Show from the theater box. 

Later, we went to a restaurant hewn out of a functioning brewry hewn out of the cavernous arrivals' hall of the old Bavarian Train Station.  The kettles and plumbing were expert equipment from Bamberg brewers, and apparently one could a take a workshop to learn about beer-making and make a few liters of one's own.

While we did not try that, we did take a souvenir bottle, packaged the traditional way, similar to a Bocksbeutel for wine from Franconia that my parents gave us. 

Later in the evening, we looked at the imposing Völkerschlachtdenkmal by twilight.  This monument is the tallest in Europe, out-doing Big Ben or the Eifel Tower, and is an absolutely massive remembrance of the defeat of Napoleon's armies in Leipzig, and honoring those who fought on both sides to bring a decisive, if temporary, peace to the warring nations.

dact and re-dact

As part of its continuing charm offensive to plug potential leaks and dampen whistle-blowers, a communique was issued en masse with current guidance to staff "to NOT/NOT download any documents" recently made public as they are still considered classified.  Further, having this information on one's office or even on one's private home computer would constitute spillage of secure data.

letterboxing

Mike Shaughnessy, of BoingBoing fame, shared his latest find, a collection of vintage colour photographs from Berlin/Verlagsanstalt für Farbenfotographie of a European tour from 1906, as a Google Maps geocaching.   This is a more pleasant alternative to the debate over the invasive nature of Street View.

These pictures are amazing and it's quite remarkable to see what has weathered conflicts and upheavals, even considering how the last century represents in most cases only a small fraction of the lifetime of the sites.  Particularly interesting was this image of Kaysersberg in the Alsace region that H and I visited in the Spring.  The geocaching grafiti tag really was eye-catching, since we had just recently watched the Kevin Costner film Dragonfly, and the symbol.  There's a similar mysterious map-related cruciform symbol that played a significant part in the plot.

naukograd

The unquelled wildfires are still raging in Russia and neighboring lands and it is a terrible and unprecedented tragedy, deadly smog settling over cities and villages wiped away.  Now the greatest urgency seems focused on minimizing potentially catastrophic and lingering damage if the fires reach nuclear research and processing facilities at Mayak--Russian for "lighthouse."  In the midst of all these tragedies that are pinned to failures of something called crisis management, which I guess is a new discipline like managed health care, it is amazing to me how what was buried and forgotten is unearthed and strewn about.  A nearby closed-town, a restricted area for plant workers that is not accessible to the public and probably did not appear on any map, suffered major environmental damage in the past and emblazoned it on its city coat-of-arms as a radio-active, glowing salamander.  The fires are out-of-control all over, but authorities especially want to ensure that latent radiation is not reawakened and spread, like that godzilla salamander or Springfield's three-eyed fish.  I wonder how often these unnamed towns are on the public radar without the spotlight of imminent disaster.  Buried in the distant past, I wonder how much awareness there is even for enviromentalists, residents and the people who keep tabs on the nuclear posturing.  I hope Russia can cope and recover, and maybe take a leading role with such crisis management in the future.

tarpaulin

Given the almost jubilant anticipation that the US financial sector held yesterday for yet another turn of the screw that opens up the flood gates for more stimulus, I feel doubly vexed that the economic assessment was winnowed away into a non-story. Of course, it was too much of a tell that banks and associates rejoiced and rallied over the TARP package. That should have made everyone a bit queasy. More dismal news would cue world governments to inject some fresh money into the economy, and like I once heard a reporter fumble the idiom, paying Peter to rob Paul, instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul.  The mixed up message is about the same but there's a subtle difference I cannot quite unravel.  Business kept its poker face, held its composure, so they can escape some measure of the scrutiny that goes with the duplicity of companies who complain venomously over government interference and call economic policies defeatist and yet gladly accept a piece of bail-out pie or unbuild to order to fulfill a government contract or niche.  A cleverly executed hybrid automobile, I am sure, would do well on the market on its own merit, but instead of innovation, cost-overruns and short-comings are buffed down with tax credits and funding earmarks for pet-projects.  I wonder what was decided behind closed doors that yanked this story from the next day’s news cycle.