great seal

Happening to revisit an article that celebrated the ban of the Confederate States flag as a symbol of hate by lampooning all of America’s state banners as derivative and perhaps designed by those not well-versed in the rules of vexillology, I had to pause over the emblem of South Carolina: I had seen the palm—palmetto tree, with crescent moon on the bumpers of a few co-workers and in the parking-lot and had always assumed that it was a symbol of solidarity of those who had been deployed to a certain forward-operating base in the Middle East, a unit badge and not any home-town patriotism. I would sing to myself, “Midnight at the Oasis—put your camel to bed.”
It turns out that this flag—which is an outlier being within the rules of simplicity and proportion where most flag-makers, either with only scant history to draw on or uninterested in aboriginal traditions, belted out what they could as eager members of the coalescing federation. Surely I’d seen this banner, along with all the others, on display in the parade-grounds but it struck me as something wholly new.
South Carolina’s flag directly recalls the battle-garb of the rebel militia with the crescent charge and the palmetto trunks that defend the fortifications against British assaults during America’s revolutionary war, instead of invoking the colours of the constituents of Yugoslavia or other desperate campaigners of inclusion and splitting the difference. Michigan’s motto is basically “if you lived here you’d be home by now,” in Latin.  Surely having a distinctive symbol is a requirement for membership, but it does seem as if some ran out of ideas and were under pressure of a deadline to throw together something.  One has to wonder what barriers to ascension that later territories had to face.

moral turpitude and misheard lyrics

This news flash from Dave Log 3.0 reminds me of that rather earth-shattering revelation that there was never a family of Berenstein Bears: that little, obnoxious ditty that Pebbles Flintstone and Bam-Bam Rubble performed in one episode wasn’t the catchy lullaby we remember.
I always thought it went “winners never lose and losers never win” and would hum that to myself, but it’s rather a creepy, anachronistic admonishment for cavemen toddlers to keep smiling, lest Satan take your souls. Not that vacuuming the house with a baby mastodon makes much sense under scrutiny, but now this song rests as really something disconcerting and jarring. I think Betty and Wilma had to witness their children grow up to be delinquents all the same.

amenities oder unterkunft

Over the weekend, H and I got a chance to dine at the oldest guesthouse in the storied and venerable city of Leipzig. 
The institution that eventually became famous, as widely known as Leipzig’s other famous restaurant Auerbachs Keller or the Hofbräuhaus of München, as Thüringer Hof came into existence in the early fifteenth century as the urban estate of the rector of the University of Leipzig (a Freihaus as such in town residences are called was exempt from city tax although it was afforded the protection of the city wall) who in 1466, realised that there was a significant market gap when it came to feeding and sheltering students—especially until they were sponsored by fraternal societies.
The rector opened up a corner of his home as a public-house—doing a brisk business for over six centuries, with just a few interruptions.

Multiple dining halls could accommodate some twelve hundred guests and the establishment was known to the likes of Martin Luther, Bach, whose home-church and choir are just around the corner (along with another less famed watering-hole, but I liked the name, nonetheless) and Richard Wagner.

hot cross-buns or imitation is the greatest form of flattery

The good doctor and faithful chronicler remind us on this Easter Monday of other ancient rites of Spring—though the mourning and fast seems transposed to the high summer months of Sumer with the solstice rather than the equinox, and it’s always dicey having truck with the elder gods since there’s not the same level of scholarship and sometimes parallels are forced (or our bias looks to distance them). In any case, there was a prolonged funeral service held every year just as the daylight started to wane a bit more than it had the day prior, and during this time is was in keeping for the mourners to make the sign of a “t” across their chests and eat little cakes stamped with a “t” for the departed but soon to return of shepherd-god Tammuz (Dumuzid), loyal consort of fertility goddess Inanna (Istar, to whom eggs and bunnies were sacred). Accounts become conflated but some hold that Tammuz (still the name of the month of July in some Arabic languages some four millennia later) died whilst defending his flock from a marauding boar.
Other mythological traditions support this trope, including the enchantress Circe turning hapless men into swine, the battle-boars of the Norse gods and the jealous god Ares (Mars) transforming himself into one to kill Adonis. Inanna threatens to make the world an infertile wasteland, unless Tammuz is returned to her. Another version offers that Tammuz dies at his own volition in order to harrow the Underworld, as for reasons only known to the goddess, she popped in to check in on the vanquished Bull of Heaven (done in by Gilgamesh and his partner in crime, Enkidu in an earlier episode) and managed to get herself stuck there. Tammuz and his lady-love only manage a compromised ransom, however, and Tammuz spends half a year imprisoned to be relieved by Inanna to serve out the rest of the annual sentence, an unsatisfactory arrangement like that movie Ladyhawke. Maybe a year without Winter (or without Summer) reunites them.

volare

Atlas Obscura has an interesting feature on the antiquated though not wholly forgotten and not wholly exclusive homosexual canting dialect called polari—from the Italian to chatter.
Camp as camp is, that’s one of the core vocabulary derived from polari (so too fruity), along flair for the theatric with ajax for near by, naff for drab and plain, troll, and zhoosh to smarten-up, it was once used as code for when the practise was considered illegal among polite company and was part of the steerage for men in the merchant-marines and waiters on cruise-lines. The parlance fell out of favour once it started to be parodied on a popular BBC production in the 1970s and became main-stream, as it were, but polari has seen a revival—with some endearing terms lasting all this time, with latter-day glam rock and specifically the final album from David Bowie.

beautiful briny

Over the weekend, H and I returned to the old gas-works of Leipzig that's been converted in a holodeck of sorts called the Panometer, which is a favourite venue for the artist and activist Yadegar Asisi.
This time, we dove, were im- mersed in the world of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, lead to the panoramic viewing-gallery with an informative display addressing the biodiversity housed in these coral shoals of the fragility of this treasured ecosystem. 
The exhibit (click on the pictures to enlarge) was informative without being gloomy, of course.
I think the most humbling and provocative aspect of it all, however, was how being in such a huge space made bigger by the stagecraft of the flats really gave one the feeling of venturing there and an idea of the macrocosm and microcosm in details that were highlighted while trying to take it all in and still asserting one’s presence without being lost in the moment.

may easter joys attend you