eros, agape, xenia, storge, philia

civics lesson or universal sufferage

Along with the other city-state of Bremen and Brandenburg, surrounding Berlin but not the federal city itself, young people in Hamburg now reach the age of voting majority for state and local matters at the age of sixteen. Sharing responsibility and direction is of course not without precedent and probably the most opportune time for engagement, when outreach and not inculcation or unlearning the habits and attitudes of parents is the best antidote against feeling either in-between or later jaded and disenfranchised.  I hope that this trend sees wider adoption.

household heraldry

I spied this interesting frieze on a corner of an apartment building while on a walk—a really singular motif, I thought, under the eaves of constructionist, cubist embellishments bracketing pilasters and edges. I was not able to determine, just yet, what such a decoration is properly called, but I adore how each functional and formative element has its own name and style. To have a home dripping with the projections of a very specific period is something pretty outstanding, almost as keen as harbouring a saint’s alcove or some other legacy in one’s living-space.

austatten

There is a certain range of predictably and com- mercially classic, which one could expect to find decorating the walls of hotel rooms and dormitories the world around. Nothing against the gaffers’ and grips’ taste and sense of style, as I am sure everyone can recall his or her first exposure to The Kiss, La Chat Noir, an unseasonable string of Christmas lights, beaded-curtain, or at least the touch of disen- chantment, because maybe you wanted to do the same, that these worthy works (testified by their infinite reproduction) displayed are not very original. I am grateful that my dear landlords equipped my work-week apartment with less conventional art work. It’s funny though, because if I look at the photo-safari souvenir of the elephants a bit askew, my eyes are drawn into a mirage of Gustav Klimt—something with the patination of the baby elephant’s ear.

habemus papem

Benedikt XVI has announced his retirement, a transition to a post in a local monastery of quiet mediation and prayer, fearing that the infirmities of old age are making him an ineffective leader. The office of Pope is an odd one for precedence, with all possible permutations discoverable—bad popes, short-lived papacies and even a lady pope, supposedly. It has been more than seven hundred years since the last Pope removed himself. Like Britain’s reigning queen, however, experience and living-memory are prevailing and formative factors, never mind that most of England’s heads-of-state were male and most occupants of the throne of Saint Peter were Italian. Familiarity, I think, does not out-strip all institutions.

There are some guardedly mysterious whispers about health and higher-level intrigues, whose speculation probably plague all such decision, but I do wonder if the seemingly responsible decision ought to be besmirched with conspiracy. Nearly eight years of services were ringing with speculation that the Pope was a place-holder, a concession to crown later a Latin pope again. If that were the case, I think Benedikt surprised detractors by hanging around this long and not just on balance being a bridge, and if anything, this controlled though unexpected stepping-down engages the Church all the more and makes people scrutinize the candidates in such a way as to make any larger agenda untenable.