happy camper

Preparing for vacation season, H was looking where we might take the Silver Lady this summer.

We’ve traveled through the Mecklenburg Lake District (Die Mecklen- burgische Seenplatten) with the Lady I. on our way to the Baltic, but H discovered a clever and fun-looking experience on offer for that holiday region, putting one’s camper on a barge and navigating through this land of a thousand lakes. I suppose the waterways where such a private ferry service would be possible are restricted, for the sake of not clogging them with vacationers, but it certainly seems like an idea that could grow and expand crowded camp grounds. We are looking seriously, however, about investing in a collapsible canoe to explore narrower straits on our own.

hari kuyo or last honours

Via the emporium of curiosities, Oddity Central, I learnt that the Japanese reserve the last day of the Lunar New Year’s celebration with a sweetly touching ceremony that’s a final tattoo for lives of long and dedicated service for pins and other such small and disposable things.

Broken and dulled pins and thrust for a final time into a block of tofu or jelly and them buried with honours—pens, staples. This ritual, in place in one form or another for at least four centuries, is an expression of gratitude for utility, perhaps the idea that all things have or can at least earn a soul, and reflects the Japanese virtue of mottainai, not being wasteful with small things, but attendance is waning some, as many young people have no connection with traditional clothes-making. I have a very soft spot for stuff like this, and won’t relinquish something broken, busted or blighted without a fight and then a silent memorial. Perhaps that’s why I get flea market fever and even a disappointing sale is not really disappointing. The spirit of the ceremony, however, is a universal one, with kimono makers whispering secrets and sorrows to their needles that they could not share with anyone else, and laying their confidants to rest was a cathartic act.

smarch und mapril

I like how the trappings of Easter, unlike with other holidays, are compelled to be taken down and stowed away for next year—or replaced by the commercial creep and anticipation of the next batch of observances around the corner, right away. I guess that’s partially owing to the fact that the customs associated with Easter, partially, are a mixed-metaphor, with all notions of promise, renewal and rebirth celebrated and borrowing from one another, and something to be savoured.

Although the coming season it heralds is having a little bit of difficulty with its launch. Nature is nonplussed with the delay, with migration and germination hitting obstacles, and I think people, considering what a tumultuous past month we’ve had—whereas March is generally sanguine: the cold-wave and drought-conditions maybe exacerbating the ongoing recession, the sequestration stand-off in the States, the banking crisis in Cyprus, adulterated meat on the store-shelves, sabre-rattling all around, massive hack-attacks, litigiousness, yet a few good things came about despite all the chaos. I think that’s why the Eierschau remains until Spring and Summer are fully established.

Most decorations are such eggs hanging from willow switches or displayed on a village well, but I also appreciated this last interpretation, which seems a custom in itself, exchanging the Christmas lights for plastic edges on these sculpted hedges. It feels like a weird, inverted interlude, barreling towards Winter rather than Summer. I hope keeping these charms on exhibit do us a better turn.

diorama or microcosmos

Bremen Public Radio features a collection of photographs from local artist Nikolai Keller posing tee-tiny people in the greatly magnified details of everyday surroundings. The article (the link does not seem to work) includes a video segment documenting his technique and patience with these model train scale figures and a link to the gallery of the artist.

predator or hyper-color

British fashions designer Adam Harvey, not to put too fine a point on it, has released a line of over garments to make the statement that the rigours of surveillance is not entirely unavoidable, even through one’s wardrobe. Although I knew otherwise, I thought that drones were mostly extended video games with remote, disconnected but human operators, maybe relying on facial-recognition but not thermal ranging, which these stylized battle-garbs intend to deflect. These hoodies are certainly rough-and-ready armour, meant to be expressive and perhaps intimidating, but maybe one could cobble the same stealth affect with those gold rescue blankets included in standard automobile first aid kits (save those and do not toss them out when your kit expires). What tin-foil pith helmets would you devise for protecting your safety and anonymity?