neutralitat or bread and butter

Meanwhile back in Switzerland, as Reuters reports (bad link), the president of the federal council says that he would lend his support into an investigation into the claims of a CIA-leaker that his tour time spent in Geneva was formative. This is one man airing his opinion who happens to be the leader of an executive body of seven individuals representing the closest thing that the free world has to direct-democracy, stemming from checks and balances established in medieval times. Of course, he's entitled to it and the story, unverifiable, of the leaker given in recent interviews did seem a little imaginative and incredulous, but it did seem like something a bit weaselly to say, at first hearing: a concession to justice American-style brokered at a sensitive time when the US is intent on barn-storming Swiss banking regulations and hosting such a circus might make the States back off from their demands a bit.
With privacy sacred and enshrined, however, it does not seem like a thoughtless comment meant to sacrifice or discredit anyone. Credibility is impossible to speak to, especially considering how America's trumped up reasons for engaging Iraq was shot full of holes like Swiss cheese by a fax transmission intercepted by the Confederation (the Swiss read all of your faxes). Maybe it was a deliberate invitation for entrapment to reveal the real scope of America's surveillance programme or a way to help ensure that a nuisance is not simply disappeared or sacrificed to maintain the status quo. I honestly feel more than a bit dissuaded from looking into this case, for fear it's already on my permanent record, and maybe a summons is what we all need to stand up to bullies, since after all, the actions—though only confirmed after a long career—of the CIA and NSA are not treaties to surpass local law but have yet negated Switzerland's (and those of everyone else) attitudes and protections for privacy touching all matters.

sunday drive: by jove

In an on-going effort to try to discover more my surround neighbour- hoods, I took the chance one afternoon to explore the suburban borough of Schierstein, bordering the Rhein and just southwest of Wiesbaden-proper. I had passed through this part of town a few times and frequented an old stand-by flea-market in the industrial area but was happy to have the opportunity to explore further, owing to a disappointing search of the market.
Passing through previously, I usually rounded a corner that held a representation of the town's crest, a blue and gold globus cruciger—that is, a crossed sphere of royal regalia, the orb, sceptre and crown. I am uncertain why the town adopted this symbol but found it interesting that the iconography was known already in Roman times and may have been introduced by the place's early occupants. An intact Column of Jupiter from the year 221 BC, depicting the Roman ruler of the gods riding a ship's figurehead, hood ornament-like rendering of the Germanic god Wotan, Jupiter's local equivalent (possibly meant to be an insult to the native Teutons and an assertion of supremacy of the Empire) was unearthed in the mid nineteenth century in the same spot on the town's harbour, a dock for a lot of leisure boats and home to Wiesbaden's yachting club.

This is a faithful reproduction and the unique original is in a museum, and such columns were the ancient equivalent of modern day garden gnomes (or perhaps in this case, a lawn jockey), which Germans are pretty fond of too. The town also had some architectural gems, like this Rococo church from the sixteenth century, dedicated to Saint Christophorus (Christopher), who of course, considering himself oafish doubted that he could ever do anything good or helpful, became the patron of travellers, since owing to his size and strength could handily ferry people across the river—surely the River Rhine as well.

The town's rooftops and with the help of the care of its human residences have also been transformed into a sanctuary for storks.  This suburb enjoys one of the highest populations in Germany and signals that such recuperation and healing campaigns can be wildly successful, with couples returning to the same roost to build their nests and rear their young year after year.

snowdonia

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.

The top manufacturing country is Brazil, climates being similar and the sheltering cliffs, like this one from the Swiss side of Lake Lugano, evoke a feeling of being in the bay of Rio de Janeiro. Italy was a relative late-comer in the silk business, whose broader history spins intrigue and is the impetus for some unlikely developments. Though robust trade had existed for at least two centuries prior via the Silk Road from the Orient, the material was a costly and mysterious luxury, the process monopolised and kept secret by Chinese exporters.

 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 (Maulbeerbäume) 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 Weißkopf, pre-dating more famous pioneers, with wings made of silk taut on a bamboo frame, intensive war-time production of parachutes for Fallschirmjäger, 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.

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 Taksım 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.

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 transfer of authority signaled the end after some sixty eight years the hosting of the headquarters of the American Army in Europe passing on to the fair city of Wiesbaden. The colours for the historic V Corps, a tenant unit, were cased, and it was a bit like rethinking tradition and memory, however antiquated, same-otherwise and as a practical exercise. I have plenty of nice recollections from Heidelberg as well, as many others come forward. A lot could be be said regarding the decision, set in motion quite some time ago but without real momentum or the garnering of an abundance of enthusiasm—as with past rounds of base closures that seemed arbitrary and even counter-productive—including the choice for the location of the event.
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.

old head waters run dry or cry me a river

Tragically a lot of people along the flood plains of the Danube, Elbe, Rhine and the Main are being made to contemplate the unimaginable—starting over and with nothing salvageable. Not comparable to over concurrent outrages, still it seems we were all unwitting accomplices, lulled into thinking that rivers would be contained with concrete and dams, shored up in response to a disaster in 2002, and policies that enabled sloppy, muddy footprints from everyone of us, as contributors.

I cannot imagine what these people are going through—though the images of disaster porn are becoming more vicarious (and shared experiences too). I cannot image what it is like to have lost all ones tangible possession and be faced with the prospects, through misadventure, of starting over, due to a grave engineering miscalculation. Closer to home, we had our share of tense moments too, watched with wringing hands and window-dressing, but these close calls, however mounting and threatening in the imagination-affording dark of night, were never destructive and seemed to stem from a natural string of consequences, unrelenting rains coupled with a premature thaw and so on. But our unbridled stream quickly blushed back to its banks. Rage, although relative, is not an honest attribute, expressed not without concert and competition, and like the suffering and nervous sandbagging, the run-away abuse and consumption is also something for which we are all co-conspirators.