six geese a-laying

Der Speigel (auf Deutsch) is reporting how the island nation of Samoa is realigning its time-zones, straddling the international date-line, to no longer be the land where the sun sets last, but to be among those where it rises first, in order to strengthen economic ties with relatively nearby China, Australia and New Zealand. The meridians of the high Pacific are a bit of a jig-saw anyway, cutting this way or that to keep island groups synchronized and not bulldozed again by European geographical standards. The Samoan government is executing a divisive transition, not slowly winding the clocks back or introducing the operating hours by phases, but rather they are just striking a day from the calendar: for no one on the islands--businesses, birthday boys and girls, St Felix, sixth day of Christmas—will on 30 December 2011 occur. Thursday will slide into Saturday, the last day of the year. No one is wrestling the down sun but I am sure there are those in Samoa who are not sure about the idea of leaving off a day, the archivists, the calendar makers, those wont to worship and keep the sabbath on a certain day of the week, and the New Year’s revelers who are, I guess, now planning for different kinds of celebrations.

oh tidings of comfort and joy

Seasons greetings to all, with health and happiness for the coming year, and many thanks for visiting. I was thinking the other day that although we have a lot of Christmas decorations, we don’t have a crèche. A few days ago, Neatorama featured a clever collection of Nativity scenes comprised of action figures.

I thought I could pull off a similar diorama, with Bib Fortuna and the Bounty Hunters 4-LOM and Zuckuss representing the Three Wise Men, the Rancor Keeper and a Sand Person the shepherds of ewoks and droids. We have more traditional figures and could have managed something more festive, of course--with Marian statues, saints, angels and über-dimensional sheeps and goats, but nothing that might make a whole joyful gathering with matching proportions. Have a holly, jolly Christmas. Frohe Weihnachten!

cool yule or psychopomp

Just in time for the passing of Yule, the Winter Solstice, a package arrived from my parents in the States with a lot of Christmas goodies we’ll be unwrapping in a few days besides, with this resplendent and very Bavarian woven table runner (Tischläufer), which I think is a modern depiction of the mythological motif of the Wilde Jagd (the Wild Hunt), associated with Yuletide and the superimposition of Christmas traditions.

Like Ghost Riders in the Sky, the Wild Hunt is a tapestry of ethereal huntsmen under the leadership of Nordic gods or sometimes Krampus (Santa's bizarro-world opposite who punishes the naughty) and was foreboding of different things: a psychopomp is such a parade of spirit guides, like astral reindeer.

In any case, the passing of Yule, where ever we might try to find meaning, symbolism or reconstruct traditions, means that the nights retreat a little bit and the sunset and the dawn creeps in earlier and earlier each day.  We'll certainly have a place to display this gift on the sideboard.

taxiway

The American airline industry and various echelons of the US government are complaining bitterly about new European Union emission levies to go into effect with the coming of the new year. The EU efforts to single-handedly maintain the spirit of the Kyoto Accords to reduce negative environmental impact by imposing a carbon-tax on all flights taking off and landing in European airports are being decried as Europe slouching towards more of an isolationist policy, not integrating (I suppose) with the flagrant push for commerce and tourism at any and all costs with the rest of the world. Such vocal complaints and taunts are recent developments, however, and may be reflecting the pressure and shame that is being directed towards the EU for the way it is handling its economic affairs, as these arrangements have been known (and opposed) for over three years. The EU, upheld by Curia in Luxembourg and other legal observers, won’t fold on this project, despite the resistance of others. The US would find itself exempt from any surcharge, which surely would be passed along to the flying public in any case, if they had their own scheme and regulations in place to reckon and curtail pollution.

the trend is towards the bourgeois-smug

With the fomenting of the delicate succession in North Korea and rampant speculation about the elections in Russia, politicians and reporters perhaps ought to be a bit more gracious in their commentary--not censored and restrained but on the contrary, using the voice and platform they have to speak for the oppressed and as well as admonishing their audience about their own tenuous state of affairs, how their ability to voice those opinions is under constant threat and due vigilance is never out of bounds.

Guarding against both writ-large and petty, creeping tyrannies is not something that's lulled or beaten out of the people with the tattoo of economic indicators and security, and given the state of politics in the Western powers, one might do well to acknowledge the diminishing margin for criticism, leisurely or otherwise. The "will" of the American people in next year's US presidential election, filtered through campaigns, slant, libel and lobbyists, potentially poses a bigger threat to the world than the not insignificant legacy of dictators. Reckoning among the influence peddlers in the banks, the military-industrial complex and the patent-holders, the average person is less at liberty, and some have gone so far to decry the United States for its leadership role towards martial law. The legal fictions of the theatre of war and trademark broadened beyond integrity are hardly the hallmarks of a free society that treasures those freedoms. It is insidious, thrown off-balance between macro-economic fears and bread-and-circuses satisfaction in miniature, to have one's liberties eroded and disappeared by regimes less transparent, despite secrets and isolation, than any dictatorship. In that hard slog to shore up the euro, Germany has won levels of confidence hardly before seen as a Wirtschaftswunder with noblesse oblige but has also forgotten a few things along the way. Clutching irony may be hard to escape from any critique, from press to press or from government to government, but German consumer satisfaction is (forgettably) to some degree a more expert and cunning application of the dirty-tricks and short-cuts that failed America and Americans, among others. Unemployment and other gauges of social complacency are low in part over wage-stagnation, glossy inflation (electronics get cheaper but staples, higher education and health care inches upward) and glossier quantitative-easing and dabbling in the dart arts of market alchemy and easy-credit. Such placations are very effective distractions and blind us to irony as much as first finding oppression and tyranny in others.

o du fröhliche or shutter-speed

I suppose there is no bigger challenge for amateur photography than a lively Christmas Market (Weihnachts-markt, Christ-kindlmarkt) in its native setting, the festive glow of the booths under an icy sky and many attractions quite kinetic, like the giant Pyramid of the Leipzig, sort of a wooden carousel with Christmas figures that's propelled by the heat of flames. Leipzig's fair is among the eldest traditions in Germany, along with nearby Dresden and Bautzen, and decorated with the holiday trappings and influence of the Ore Mountains' (Das Erzgebirge) arts and crafts.

Beneath the spinning installation, a booth serves a insulating and potent cup of fortified punch called Feuerzangenbowle, a variation on Glüwein--a conditum paradoxum, a "spiced-surprise" in Latin. The sheltered arcades that crisscross the old city were also decked out dazzlingly, like this tall and illuminated tree around the corner from Auerbachs Keller, the historic restaurant, older than the Christmas market itself, that was made famous by Marlowe's and Goethe's Faust. Christmas trees, I understand, became the more dominant symbols of the season but still share a place alongside their highland and up-land forebears, the Pyramide, and creates a composition that really sets the mood--memorable, despite the challenges of sharing that scene and atmosphere in pictures.