sister cities

It was a bit disheartening to learn, a few months ago, that some communities of the British Isles were formally severing ties, de-twaining themselves from twin towns and villages in continental Europe.
The relations, I suppose, had gone mostly inactive with cultural exchanges and engagements rarer and rarer and only with the guilt-inducing (or affirming) reminders on the city-limits sign. There was also the instigation that the ties were not only irrelevant but came out of a backlash against EU politicking and monetary policy. One remote Scots village in the Highlands, home to some three hundred residents, called Glenelg is bucking the trend, however, and embracing the notion of adopting a sister location. Those cartographers and explorers mapping out the Martian rover Curiosity’s route named a certain geological feature along the path, one which Curiosity will pass on its venture outward and again on its way back, after this settlement’s namesake in the Northwest Territories in Canada with a palindromical name. Residents are very proud of this distinction and are the first village to pair itself with an extraterrestrial locale.

boatswain

Another recent flea-market find was this bronze statuette, perhaps a trophy (Pokal), but determining anything further on it has proved quite a mystery. The vendor only knew that this very heavy bronze figure on a black marble base was from an artist in Hamburg. The piece is either dated or numbered on the fore of the boat with “19 | 94” and then inscribed with only a sideways, stylized W or E with two dots inside. The base looks like it might have once had a plaque attached to it—which is why I thought it might be some kind of prize. The inside of the boat that the tall man is standing in is etched like a leaf but otherwise cast like a small vessel. The ship’s wheel (Steuerrad) the man is handling is also an unusual detail. Do you have any guesses about this piece?

la serenissima

The UK daily the Telegraph is reporting on a secessionist movement and mass rally along the canals of the city of Venice, which may gain more traction at a quicker pace than other parallel calls for independence in Scotland from Great Britain and Catalonia from Spain.

United Italy already hosts the devolved Papal States as the Vatican, the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta and the Republic of San Marino (plus a few other aspirants) within its borders, and the maritime and mercantile empire of the doges only became annexed due to the barn-storming of Napoleon’s armies, like many other city-states and pocket-republics across the continent—with some notable allowances. The roots of this protest go back decades but economic instability and having to pay tribute to Rome may be the trigger that carries this popular movement. Reasserting lapsed boundaries, once the first province is freed, I think will cascade quite quickly and I don’t know how the map will look afterwards.

exposure latitude

Via the always outstanding Colossal, Flickrer Bastian Kalous shares some amazing and evocative photographs captured with a Polaroid instant camera. These images are imprinted with a certain heirloom palette on a canvas not often seen and the results are mysterious and hauntingly beautiful. His photo pool, which lies somewhere in an unexplored valley—not sinister but something with the compulsion and persistence of a last-known photograph—fortunately has several hundred of these chemical compositions to discover, ranging from his home by Passau in the Bavarian Forest to the Grand Canyon.