pilgrims' progress

The juxta-position is at first a bit jarring, the centuries old wayside shrine (Bildstock) that I found wandering along a valley path compared to the electronic and networked cattle-brand-invitation displayed on an equally old church door, and a pilgrimage was never supposed to be a scavenger hunt or a popularity contest. Perhaps curiosity overtook the journey in itself with development of tourism, moving from religious wonder to respect for history and art—still inspired and inspiring, though. Some aspects of the Canterbury Tales did make the events some more like a social hour our cruise ship inmates, rather than a rite, sojourn and expedition (Pilgerweg).

Maybe it’s not so different—although I don’t think that one needs more real world reminders and visual cues especially in a place like Franconia and Germany, crowded with churches and altars of all sorts—from devotional artwork and the way, for instance, these ancient markers not only helped travelers keep to the trail but the way posts were often dedicated and personalized for pilgrims that were not able to reach the goal. I guess it’s fine to import such ornaments and memorials into people’s virtual lives and help with their spiritual vigils. The journey, no matter how many shortcuts are invented or indulged, still retains important elements of discovery and upbuilding.

endonymy or we call it maize

Watching the soccer (Football, Fußball) match between two countries known outwardly (exonym) by their monikers in the Lingua Franca in the Baltic city of Gdańsk (Danzig), I wondered how they take to being called something completely different and view the lingering imperialism of language. Of course, English is not the only steamroller and all peoples historically developed their own roots and reasons to talk about outsiders, but as the choice of a common tongue above the din and babbling, it’s interesting to consider how labels and aliases are just one persona and taking a deeper look is quite telling.

high-fidelity or bring me a pineapple that doesn’t sting, a bird that swims, a fish that sings

I have contributed a nominal amount to my private pension fund, an opportunist surely that blurs the limits between brooding a nest-egg and retirement supplement and high-stakes ventures that happens to management the pensions for a good portion of the American federal workforce, and so as not to encourage more reckless behaviour, I’ve kept it at the absolute minimum: one cannot contribute less than one percent and I’ve justified that much since the government matches it. Still, over the years it has amounted to a not insignificant sum that’s not readily reclaimable.

I suspected and it’s been confirmed several times over that this money-manager is gambling with people’s life-savings and that they benefited from their quasi-public status—however I didn’t suspect that they were actively hatching evil schemes for one’s money, apart from the expected trading in legitimized weapons companies, polluters and assassins. Their latest pursuit, I discovered through their advertisements (though little reporting and fact-finding is to be found supporting or otherwise questioning this image and vision) is something called synthetic biology, which is only a re-branding of terms that are waxing scary like cloning, genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms. Their promotion and prospectus implies that such research and development, which will one day triumph over Nature’s numbers and diversity, can produce bacteria to clean up industrial spills and halt disease by disabling its agents. This is a Brave New World with many goodly creatures but I can also easily imagine a genetic dystopia that failed to respect the dependencies and relations of ecology. Business has already been over-eager with introducing new crops that are untested and unsuited and have been less than forthcoming (with mounting resistance) and spent more resources on protecting patents and discrediting critics than on actual scientific research. It is one thing to make mosquitoes that don’t bite or self-cleaning beaches, but I would imagine that Nature would rebel and be less than compliant, mirroring the phenomena of drug-resistant germs created by keeping too clean. I don’t think it’s a good idea to mortgage one’s pension on such a future.

road trip or avsenkmorthu

When I was little and on a long drive with my family to visit the grandparents—epic cross-country odysseys as I recall, one activity that kept my sister and I occupied, after I-Spy, card games and general irritability, was the challenge to complete the alphabet (in alphabetical order) from billboards, license tags and traffic signs. We would make up all sorts of arbitrary rules about what didn’t count—something seen outside the window while at a filling station, for example, or consecutive letters on the same sign—and some letters were exceedingly rare.

Sometimes on long trips in Germany, I mentally register, play the same game, although it’s a bit tougher to play-through and I usually don’t finish because there are no advertising corridors along the Autobahn to block out the landscape (besides the scenery is almost always too captivating), and unless in Sylt, Quedlinburg or Xanten, one needs to rely exclusively on spotting license plates. In Germany and most European countries, license plates (Kennzeichen) are coded by the community, county where they are registered and so teach a little about geography as well. I know a lot of the German county (Kreis) abbreviations and keep a guide and an index in the car to help identify unusual ones and decipher foreign protocols. What would one find on the roads of Russia or Greece? In France, for instance, Départements are assigned two-digit numbers alphabetically or in Estonia, A is reserved for the district (Tallinn) with the biggest population, B for the second biggest and so on—methods which don’t seem as directly intuitive and recognizable, but Italy and Ireland code by county like Germany. Though one cannot discover a Europe-wide convention for identifying cars’ home (zu Hause), many countries have adopted a German standard as far as the look of license plates go: traffic signage in German first adopted industry standards through uniformity with the labeling of the rolling-stock of the Imperial Railways with the design of DIN 1451 (Das Deutsche Institut für Normung), a typeface (font) refined and distinct for all public works.

DIN 1451, sleek and san-serif as it appears on road signs, was also used for automobiles until the days of campaigns of domestic terror by the Red Army Faction: in response to members or associates alluding capture by changing the markings on their vehicles, a new stylized-serif variety was introduced that made it more difficult to forge one’s license plate (changing a I to an L or an P to an R with electrical tape or mistaking one letter or number for another) called FE-Schrift (that is, fälschungserschwerende Schrift, lettering harder-to-fake). The thought and care that went into these statutes is pretty interesting as well. After the prefix, I am not sure how the last letters on a plate are assigned (if there is any reason to it) but I do always seem to get stuck on J, except when in Jena.

ch.elvetica

The ever fascinating BLDGblog has a neat and adventure inspiring review of the 1984 study of the Swiss military by John McPhee.  For a nation whose military is better known culturally for being the Pontiff's bodyguards and steadfast in its neutrality, the defensive forces of Switzerland have basically wired and booby-trapped the entire infrastructure around its natural landscapes to stop any invading forces dead in their tracks. Taking the strategic high-ground, some mountains are as porous as Swiss cheese with secret bunkers and ambush-points, bridges and tunnels are primed with dynamite, overpasses even aligned to collapse onto railroads, and the majority of villages are hiding armaments and soldiers underneath barns.  Some 3,000 defensive features are publicly acknowledged but surely there are more lurking.  It is strange to think about alpine passes readied dramatically for self-destruction in the worst case scenario and a shadowy army that can disappear into the mountains and walk through walls.

RIF-raff or circumlocution office

Infernal engines (Höllen-machine) that are allowed to age gracefully, the surplus stuff of the commissariat, into a complex and convoluted bureaucracy, have a strong sense of self-preservation. This is especially apparent during the once-a-decade exercise of fleecing the US military through what’s called Reduction in Force (RIF), when the community, courtiers and panderers put to test all mandatory trainings and contingencies and the full encumberment of the offices’ arsenal of red-tape. This sort of impossible dragnet, a Gordian knot, is rather clever, since it justifies ones job, sticking to protocol and procedure and knowing how to unlace the mess with proper ceremony.

The cost savings measures, I think, are not the most sincere—even counting backwards from nonsense, too much seems ventured for naught: maintaining a standing army is woefully expensive and discipline is threatened with institutionalization; old fronts and occupations ought to be remembered in perspective, honouring peace and maturing partnerships, but neither by inventing new threats nor propping up an failing network that used to connect all points on the map, a compliment to Church hierarchy and ambassadorial missions; slicing the budget in favour of the defense-contractors (another form of insincerity) and withholding that military mother-love that makes careers but also breeds dependency and the sense of entitlement that’s reflected by the bureaucrats.

A soldier dismissed or a career official made redundant have, in many areas, had their ways paved and might find it difficult to operate outside that framework. I am sure that any and every workplace in environment has the potential for attracting and retaining individuals with certain core-competencies and can be an expensive terror all around—I just find it a little frightening that my laudable organization won’t always be so concentrated and quarantined in an archane little corner of Germany and those particular talents are exploding out into the world. Special powers, I think, and prowess don’t get diluted once dispersed, and instead there’s more than enough personality to share. It would be ashamed, still, to break up the band—the routine and the selectivity, gossip, problems kept hidden and very vocal tattling and the suspension of disbelief (Aussetzen der Zweifel). Most days, work is like an immense Rube Goldberg contraption but the gears hit a snag in the same spots every time, but sometimes it does work, happily, and the chain-reaction comes to its conclusion.

stem cells

The Miracle Sticks (the twisted and knotty willow branches) from Easter lasted a good few days after bursting into colour. Eventually, they did fade and wilt but I noticed that they had developed quite an extensive root system in the vase full of water—funny non-differentiated little roots that came directly out of the stem, like the bristles of an onion. I planted them in a big pot and tried to keep the barest green shoots left to the sticks alive with a lot of water. One germ of a twig looked promising but I thought the rest were dead, and I never expected them to regenerate like they have and grow into proper trees. I guess miraculous things carry on.