Saturday 15 June 2013
silk road or it happened on the way to mulberry street
Although we did not seen much evidence of this native industry during our recent vacation to the Lombardy region (but it is surely there if one seeks it out and knows where to look), Como and its environs produce an astonishing quarter of the worldwide output of silk.
Not quite on a mission to save souls, two monks were sent to the Far East, charged by the French monarchy of finding out the secret and bringing back to Europe, in the mid fifteenth century, in what may be the earliest example of industrial espionage. Having learnt the process, the monks smuggled seeds of the mulberry tree and eggs of caterpillars in diplomatic pouches, messenger tubes of bamboo. Mulberry leaves were the exclusive diet of silk-worms, the juvenile form of the moth Bombyx mori who spin cocoons out of silk.
It's sad and unfair that these little hopeful caterpillars are boiled alive in the middle of their metamorphosis in order to harvest their weave and warp, but having mastered the cultivation and working the material, places like Lyon soon became very rich and influential for having broken the cartel. Without the zealous explosion in mills, producing ever more intricate and automated patterns, the industrial and modern computing may have never happened—the looms emerging as something programmable and Turing-complete with cards, instructions for producing designs. The rest of Europe was not content to let the French have all the profits and glory, however, and others learnt the process, including the former Italian and Venetian middle-men in the original and established trade process, sore at having their business suffer.
Prussia's Frederick the Great, whose alchemists are also credited with making the first china, porcelain, outside of China, wanted in on the game too and ordered the cultivation of mulberry trees (Maulbeerbรคume) all over Germany—this is why the mulberry is not an exotic plant these days, as fodder for the little caterpillars. This legacy still exists today, and German silk-making, in the interim led to a successful early manned-flight by a certain tinkerer and aviator in Bavaria named Gustave Weiรkopf, pre-dating more famous pioneers, with wings made of silk taut on a bamboo frame, intensive war-time production of parachutes for Fallschirmjรคger, and a textile export for the DDR that was in demand and a source of pride. What an interesting chain of events the cocoons of a little bug, that is still an ugly duckling afterwards, brings together.
Thursday 13 June 2013
macarthur park is melting in the dark
Though those genuine articles of engagement and dependent reform may be elusive still, but it is a note-worthy development that the media churns, possibly with a certain chomping at the bit to break the sorrowful or revolutionary, with the elaborated entrenchment at Taksฤฑm Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul—and any other surprise walk-on cameo waiting in the wings, seems a bit of a trade-off.
The sustained attention is a positive outcome, but in for a penny, in for a pound, it seems a bit of a poor volley to inspire sudden changes of heart and arm-chair relativism and acutely detracting from the message. Originating as a human barricade to protect the city's green-spaces from commercial development and growing from there, the government did not entertain dialogue or negotiation but suppressed the outcry, rather, with violence. It's OK to admit ignorance as to the developing situation in Turkey, with the the hope that information will be unmediated and forth-coming, without prospecting and with pressured demure.
The sustained attention is a positive outcome, but in for a penny, in for a pound, it seems a bit of a poor volley to inspire sudden changes of heart and arm-chair relativism and acutely detracting from the message. Originating as a human barricade to protect the city's green-spaces from commercial development and growing from there, the government did not entertain dialogue or negotiation but suppressed the outcry, rather, with violence. It's OK to admit ignorance as to the developing situation in Turkey, with the the hope that information will be unmediated and forth-coming, without prospecting and with pressured demure.
catagories: ๐น๐ท, revolution
re-flagging or from blueberry hill to bath in the meadows
I was disappointed to learn that after years of digging in her heels, credulous with disbelief and subject to politics and planning that were not exactly rooted in reason that I missed the official ceremony that was the city of Heidelberg's final relenting—held literally just around the corner.
The parade-grounds were not on the air field in Wiesbaden, were the headquarters are being built, but rather the venue chosen was the palatial gardens of Schloss Biebrich on the Rhine. I think that the decision for the setting was more than just aesthetic—with no viable location on base, due to on going construction and severe over-crowding and a sanctioned protest rally planned for the same day by the post's German neighbours to complain about the worsening noise from night-time training flights. I am sorry that I only found out about this occasion too late to see it in person and hope that there were not too many inauspicious omens for the exchange and we will see what the transformation brings in the next few years.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, foreign policy, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz