cowboys and indians: on the way to canossa

The shrewd administrator and extremely accidental pope Urban II toured France and Italy, mostly to set aright the balance of the respective domains of Church and State—not to pull the twain asunder nor to eschew the clerics’ civic responsibility, which most would describe as meddling—by putting the secular powers firmly in their place. Urban was heir to the battle royale of the wills between the papacy and the imperial throne. His predecessor Pope Gregory VII had excommunicated Emperor Henry IV for his attempts to circumvent Church authority by giving out (or rather selling, what’s known as simony) religious offices as sort of grace-and-favour rewards to his loyal nobles.

Once excommunicated, the allegiance of his subjects was null and void and effectively ended his reign—except that Henry went one better and installed his own anti-pope in Rome to rechristen him as the Holy and Roman emperor of the Germans. The genuine Holy See elevated an anti-king, and so on. Urban was a powerful public speaker and his arguments and railing against the nobles appealed to a vast audience, but a chance plea for assistance from the Byzantine emperor of the East gave the resourceful Urban the cementing petition he needed to reassert religious supremacy over the landed-gentry. The Seljuk Turks had occupied the Anatolian peninsula and the Norman conquests had established enclaves in the Balkans and Alexius I Comnenus request for help (on behalf of the Eastern Church, ostensibly) to the legitimate Church became a seductive rallying point. Although the incursions in Byzantium which threatened its territorial integrity were recent developments and the mad, cruel reign of Caliph Al-Hakim bi Amr Allāh that over saw the destruction of many Jewish and Christian places of worship (to be restored and rebuilt by his predecessor) in the Holy Land was reportedly violent enough to be topical though it was some seventy years hence, on balance there was little strife among the three Abrahamic religions—and under Muslim rule, which had taken hold in the Middle East over four centuries earlier, practising other faiths was tolerated and even protected. Not everything was peaceable, of course, but given the threats that confronted daily life a thousand years ago, disease, brigandage and the general cheapness of life, it was a pretty manageable arrangement.
Such facets of the complicated geo-politics of the day (and the Muslims surely had their own sectarian and sacred and mundane intrigues to contend with and spin as well) were too bothersome to try to extract, so in the year 1095 with fire-and-brimstone Urban rallied the crowds to commit themselves to retaking the lands lost in the Eastern Empire—and, with spot-on improvisational skills, the Holy Land itself—with tales, harking back to the worse atrocities magnified of the mad caliph. Urban attached a grave urgency to this holy campaign, as churches were being desecrated and pilgrims tortured and executed—a pilgrimage being a popular way to atone for one’s sins, though Canossa was not arduous enough to impress Pope Gregory. The pope hoped to let his convocation germinate and give the feudal lords the chance to assemble men and supplies, but perhaps his speech was a little too persuasive, as instead of under the leadership warrior-bishops or the knights of those newly created recruiting orders (the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutons or the Maltese) the peasants marched off at their own accord, infused with righteous indignation. Some forty thousand massed in Köln and headed towards Constantinople. Along the way, I suppose to vent some aggressions and prime themselves for combat, they burned synagogues and harassed the Jewish population. Shamed into quick action and more importantly, deprived of the serf labour force needed to work the land and provide protection, the armies of the nobility marched the other direction, towards Jerusalem on their crusade—the peasants having all been captured or killed in their zeal by the Turks.

supercuts

It’s pretty difficult to point to something and declare it either original, visionary or retro and derivative.
Not that the latter are necessarily negative qualities or opposed to the former, I suppose that there is a bit of pride that’s attached to one’s contemp- oraries, which is a fine thing too, since I think not much ruffles the curiosity more than being disabused of smug creativity. Musician, benefactor and producer George Harrison, who was certainly among the farsighted and talented set, even had the courtesy to place a macro-image meme of himself in the inside sleeve, I was reminded, of his 1975 Extra Texture album—tucked away, like a time-capsule to remember later, just like the primordial LOL cats or early examples of viral shorthand.

so goes the neighbourhood

Though some may posit that the refugees that come in hopes of settlement in better lands represent those whom did not make the cut in their homelands, and while that might have been a true characterisation of the pilgrims that landed on Plymouth Rock and the penal colony that was Australia, I think that it’s a rather placating racist thing to believe, allowing one to believe that he is refraining judgment on a whole people and culture while excusing the xenophobia one harbours for the neighbours.

Of course, hope and perception fosters the rarefied notions of ethnicity plus the attendant traffickers that promise to facilitate the transfer. Taking a stance that somewhat inverts the surge of, as reported, of South American immigrants on the southern border of the US, lured, some cry, by the guarantees of amnesty and a better life, the interior minister of Kosovo is demanding that western Europe repatriate the thousands of asylum-seekers, among the country’s most destitute, as quickly as possible. I am only cognisant really of this story, stuck in a traffic-snarl behind a tour bus whose advertised route shuttled between Pristina, the capital, and Düsseldorf, and I suspect the rush and crush is due to the responsible EU body proclaiming Kosovo to be a proper country and no longer meeting its criteria for granting sanctuary. The unlucky souls in the immigration lottery should be dealt with in an expedient matter and most importantly, perhaps, to defang the traffickers’ wiles by dispelling the bewitchment of the West. What do you think? Per capita, I’d venture that this statement is shielding people from disappointment and from harm while acknowledging that such routes are driven with allures of welfare as well.

green-shoots or brussel-sprouts

Though it is probably not possible to legislate morality or majority opinion with controls and tactics that paradoxically would not wilt before Corporate Europe Observatory’s latest fact-finding report, the group, which is devoted to uncovering cronyism, revolving-door political appointments and general corruption within the EU halls of power, hopes to at least sham-shame those European public-relations firms that play the willing sophist—with bogus, whitewashed blather—to some of the world’s most brutal regimes. One would think that one can only recognise ruthlessness in hindsight, given what image-makers can do, and how a little, well targeted character assassination can obscure real assassinations. The detailed study with eighteen cases can be perused at the link.

talvisota tai finmark

The young country of Finland found itself in a very unenviable position just after the start of WWII. Until 1809, Finland had been a part of the Kingdom of Sweden, until Imperial Russia conquered the territory to provide a buffer-region (a march) to protect Saint Petersburg during the Napoleonic Wars. This freshly created Duchy of Finland, however, took the chance to break free during the chaos of successive revolutions and civil wars that visited Russia and was able to declare independence in 1918, just before the peace was brokered for WWI.

The non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union also defined the respective powers’ spheres of influence, and Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries were ceded to the Stalin regime—Germany’s violation of the agreement with invading Poland of course was the catalyst for starting the fighting—and though Finland had made strong connections with the other neutral Nordic nations, the Soviet Union tugged on Finland, expecting it to assimilate as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had done. During the Winter War (Talvisota in Finnish) of 1939 the Finns rebuffed the Red Army, using among other conventional weapons, an improvised incendiary device, called the Molotov cocktail, named after the Soviet foreign minister whose negotiations had sacrificed Finland in the first place. The advance on the part of Moscow had given the League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) cause to reject Soviet membership. Germany did not hesitate in making overtures to the precarious Finnish government after the Soviet withdrawal, which I think to everyone’s surprise, the Finns entertained. Ostensibly, the arrangement could be seen as an opportunistic quid-pro-quo—giving Germany the staging ground for its invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa)—though whether that was already in the making is unclear—and the chance for Finland to reclaim resource-rich territory lost, but I suspect that the damning, besmirching decision was recognised as the only alternative available and the vanities of legacy and repute were quickly cast away. The Finnish foreign minister, Rudolf Holsti, chose what he felt was the lesser of two evils by committing his “government” and not his country to support the Nazi regime—worded carefully so that the decision could be overturned by the next government, as it was, and would hopefully preserve Finland as an independent state, which it did. The Soviets attacked Finland for this treachery, but it avoided annexation. Though the definition of what a democracy is a very subjective one, the UK and the Allies’ attack on Finland, who’s since reformed its reputation and I think this chapter of history goes unknown outside of Scandinavia, in what’s called the Continuation War (Jatkosota) marks by some estimates the only war-time hostility between two democratic powers.

herbaceous or victory garden

A happy pair of Redditors shared these pretty awesome maps that depict some of the herbal resources found on the continents of Europe and Africa. Click on the images for larger samples. News of the snake-oil—or rather placebo (from the Latin, “I do no harm”) peddling that was taking place in the States, where some popular distributors were selling cheap substitutes to a trusting public may have managed to turn some off of the idea of herbs—whether culinary, homeopathic or sacred, but I think that the fascination is still there and not so much cynicism as to let corporate greed and callousness dry up all curiosity.

Whether an aspiring chef, herbalist or witch, this guides provide a nice reference for what potions you might be able to grow in your window-sill garden and gives a brief explanation of their traditional uses.  Like the contributors, I had problems sourcing these charts back to their origin—there’s only the shop’s website, an emporium, of course of herbs and spices, which does not seem to carry prints of these items, like those pretty ubiquitous mushroom and cheese medleys, but otherwise, it seems to be a pretty sly case of guerilla marketing.

five-by-five

crucible: Norway’s memorial to victims of its witch-trials

stereoscope: the classic View-Master gets a virtual-reality upgrade

there and back again: illustrations of the Hobbit from all over the world

fleuron and range-dash: rather convincing illustration of how typewriters have destroyed the art of type-setting

think different: one’s next ride could be an Apple product 

able i was, ere i saw elbe

Here are a few parting-impression of our little trip to Hanseatic Hamburg, one of three of Germany’s city-states but unique in many ways. Though our exposure was limited to the usual tourist-experience, it struck me as quite livable, more so than other metropolitan areas—though there were distinct signs of gentrification and I had the feeling that denizens were cleft if not to their class but to the demographics of their boroughs, a truth about gentrification that was probably peppered by the voting Sunday and campaigning in the air.
It was also quite striking to me how this city, this inland empire, as close to the Baltic as to the Atlantic, controlling only the narrows of the Elbe for trade, has retained its dominance, even as many other knots only over-land and over-sea routes have faded.
It seems a lot of naturally endowed infrastructure, staging has been forgot, whereas Hamburg remains an attractive force. There are outposts, once regaled in the same way, along the roads that once brought trade between the great cities, usually anchored to the seaways, but have only memories to show for their strategic locations. I am grateful, however, that Hamburg preserved its heritage and has only grown its capacity for import-export, without regard for how the paradigm of trade might have changed.
There’s a genuine character that’s formed and sustained the famous Reeperbahn (named after the street where the rope-weavers lived) and Saint Pauli, despite the tourists but maybe because. Not far afield from its renowned football-pitch lies a brutal-looking WWII era anti-aircraft tower. The finely- tiled old Elbe tunnel is buried deep underneath the river and the narrow lane is open to cars during rush-hour and not just foot traffic.
The bureaucracy has created a unique skyline, as has the corporate headquarters and the prestige-projects, like the newly added Elbe-Philharmonic, that are terriors of the shipping business that remains as big and prominent as ever. With some two-thousand four-hundred bridges, Hamburg has the most crossings of any city on Earth and has more canals than both Amsterdam and Venice combined.  I am not sure if that figures in number or volume, as Venice did seem to be unsurpassed in the quirkiness of its waterways.

The architectural heritage of the city, blocks of warehouses that until recently characterised a free-trade zone, are really transfixing when set against the history and machinery—the cranes and cargo containers, and, as office-space for any business wanting a foothold, still are prized real-estate and without, out-priced, denigrating where one might hang his shingle.  I am really glad that we had the chance to visit and spend a few days discovering, and I am looking forward to going back in warmer weather, even if that means braving the crush of other visitors and not having the place all to our selves.