Recognising what the world needs now, Pope Francis threw open the Mercy Gate of the Lateran Archbasilica (the Pope’s church as the Bishop of Rome) and declared an extraordinary Jubilee Year—a decade earlier than the next scheduled time of forgiveness and reconciliation, which are announced periodically at quarter- or half-century intervals.
Ordering the door to be unbricked (sealed in earnest outside of these periods), the Pope promises that this message of grace will counter the violence and fanaticism in the world—and in people’s hearts. Quite a few basilica-major around the world, including Saint Peter’s in the Vatican and Santiago de Compostela in Spain, have their own Holy Doors and their own tradition and millions of pilgrims are expected to pass through these thresholds over the next year. The Papal Bull—Misericordiรฆ Vultus—allows for bishops everywhere to declare his own Mercy Gate for this Year of Jubilee. After the ceremony and reflection, the faรงade of San Giovanni in Laterano became the canvas to promote mindfulness of another urgent threat to peace, environmental degradation, with a light-show of projected images of the natural world. His Holiness is primed to act on Mother Nature’s behalf as well.
Wednesday 9 December 2015
porta sancta
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐ป๐ฆ, ✝️, environment, holidays and observances
Tuesday 8 December 2015
744 evergreen terrace
Long before there was such a concept of the internet leaking and before people could find the others and engage in fancy-dress parties (and prior to the advent of home-owners’ associations that might have not permitted such an addition to their neighbourhood), the ever-intrepid Atlas Obscura places this national landmark on the registry: the Simpsons’ home.
Back in 1997, the television franchise, partnering with one of the cola-war belligerents, offered one lucky winner a dream home that was as true to the show as architects could execute with real world materials and the laws of physics. Presently, the unique home is camouflaged amongst the ticky-tack of suburbia but one can still detect the nuanced faรงade. It’s a little sad to see it having faded into the background—once painted and furnished to order—and to discover that the winning family choose the cash prize instead of moving. I understand it might have been an odd experience at first, but the spacious and resilient house was surely something enviable, especially for the likes of Gil Gunderson or Frank Grimes.
catagories: ๐บ, architecture, The Simpsons
Monday 7 December 2015
5x5
sinister: Rorschach-like battery of tests reveals how hand-bias shapes how reality is perceived
foley artist: absurdist gallery of the everyday items used by resourceful minds to create sound-effects
him that you call tiamat: protesting government support for churches, Iceland’s newest “religion” attracts more converts by refunding the tithe
perustulo: Finland plans to provide every citizen with a basic income
ancien rรฉgime: marketers newest cachet invokes the mood and trappings of pre-revolutionary France—the last time wage disparity was so high
Sunday 6 December 2015
the fabulists or animal farm
As a freshman I can recall, in anticipation of reading the Platonic dialogues, that young, new students were warned off early on from drawing parallels of the trial and execution of Socrates and the judgement and crucifixion of Jesus—the comparison disdained as something obvious and sophomoric and rather a dangerous path to pursue. I of course was immediately drawn to the forbidden subject—completely new to me and probably nothing that I would have formulated on my own, but—wisely, I suppose, I kept that to myself.
Academics have come to recognize countless other messianic proceedings, both popularly and privately, and does tend to discourage reading too much into these dockets. One rather indulgent biography, with legendary portions and a lot of embellished and contradictory details of exploits and called a romance, addresses the life and career of a slave in Samos called รsop, whose fables with personified foxes, lambs, donkeys and other characters are so ingrained and indoctrinating that one would be pressed to fail at making the allusion. The talking animals explore power-relationships and this allegorical device is the only way a slave could possibly mock his social betters in a highly hierarchical society and hope to keep his head—though the allegory is a thinly-veiled thing and I always wondered about listeners not getting the subtext. No tyrant, however flattered and deluded, would exclaim, I think, “what do you I’m not the innocent little rabbit?” The life and times of รsop outside what is revealed in the fables is not really considered a reliably scholastic piece of work, there being too many versions and it’s mostly just lurid and with a lot of crude humour and misogyny, but the life of รsop is surprising similar to the two exemplars above—Socrates (also considered endearingly ugly) even composing fables in the style of รsop (many others have continued this tradition of the past three thousand years) as he’s awaiting his punishment, perhaps thinking that the direct-approach was the wrong way to go about things.
Most versions of the romance agree that รsop was born into slavery and sold to a wealthy sophist on the รgean island of Samos and was an extremely physically repulsive individual. Mute and without the power of speech at first, after showing kindness to a temple priestess, despite her being terrified of this ugly man offering help, the goddess Isis (figuring large in Greek culture also at the time) granted him not only the power of speech but also of eloquence. Glossing over the lewd episodes, รsop’s parables saved him in many situations and allowed him to show up the professors at the philosophical schools. The slave who was never allowed to purchase his freedom in the traditional sense but nevertheless enjoyed much respect and autonomy was himself put to death—on trumped up charges of slander, by being made to walk off a cliff in Delphi after having supposedly slandered Apollo. The gods, echoed by Socrates, have a tendency to mete out their own punishment without human help, and a slighted Apollo did not let offending mortals off that easily.
Saturday 5 December 2015
dies vitiosus
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, ๐บ, networking and blogging
daytrip: the rosenau
After the outbreak of World War I made the British royal family much more reticent about admitting to their German connections, the property stood empty. As the Russian Revolution displaced other relations, however, the surviving line of the Romanov family and titular empress of the realm—with her ladies in waiting—was allowed to live there in exile, and in relative peace and comfort, having converted the library into an Orthodox chapel, until her death in 1938. Today, the castle and grounds are maintained as a state park and museum, and we’ll surely visit again for a tour and to see the gardens and their follies—ruins, grottoes and an artificial waterfall, in full glory. I knew some of this history beforehand, but it will forever strike me as incredulous that such events took place right down the road and garner little attention or fanfare.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ท๐บ, Bavaria, revolution, Thรผringen