a moveable beast

Via the enchanting Messy Nessy Chic, we are treated to the rare sight of antique taxidermy specimens from Bergen’s Natural History Museum (the historic Hanseatic trading houses of the Bryggen port are the second from the bottom), as captured by photographer Helge Skodvin, as they are carefully moved to temporary quarters while the museum undergoes extensive restoration. The whole menagerie is really a delight to peruse and this undertaking reminds me of how the first provisional government of West Germany was convened in the Zoological Museum of Bonn, with a similar assortment of creatures in the gallery, as many were too big or delicate to move.

curveball

Although it was known for years that agents and informants were keeping their country’s diaspora under surveillance to uncover any expatriates who might be harbouring critical views of the ruling regime, it seems no one really appreciated the scope and the reach of this network in Germany (which rivalled the Stasi of East Germany) and other European countries with significant Turkish populations until the failed coup.  In fact Ankara’s MİT (Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı) had formerly worked closely with counterpart intelligence services in host nations to thwart potential terrorism and smuggling operations (of all sorts), but in the aftermath of the failed coup, spies have been drawn closer to the regime and deployed to menace and intimidate (reminding the exiled that they still have family in the homeland can force anyone to be silent or even rally in the regime’s support) those that probably left the country in the first place over political reasons.
Now, instead of having faith in the intelligence of their partners, the BND and others fear that any information they act on might have been presented to them in order to incriminate individuals (sort of the reserve false testimony of the informant known as Curveball, a dissident who feed the war hawks the salacious details it wanted to hear) who don’t share the Turkish government’s vision of how national and religious identities are to be portrayed and exercised.

meet the warner brothers and the warner sister, dot

Tinkerers Orville and Wilbur Wright had a sister named Katherine, a teacher, suffragan, and alumna of Oberlin College (the only graduate in the family), who very substantially contributed to their (while not seminal—more here and here) important and pioneering demonstrations of powered-flight.
Though there’s no clear documentation whether the unsung Wright had wished herself to be an aviatrix or helped with the design, there is testament to her relatively unacknow- ledged work behind the scenes that included running the brothers’ bicycle shop while they were away experimenting (with no backers, their only source of funding for their trials) better than they had done themselves and acting as their unwavering publicity agent and tour manager, encouraging them to persevere against a doubting public. Be sure to read the full account of the life of the heroine of Kitty Hawk at the link up top.

flotsam and jetsam

As with most infrastructure since the times of the Ancients—the Romans being civil engineers par excellence, urban populations have grown by factors while the means and conveyance to bring in necessities and then to haul it all away only creep along until compelled.  Maybe there is some virtue in building a road to no where.
One again gleaming example comes to us from Hyperallergic’s profile of the Victorian-era Crossness Pumping station, commissioned with the odious task of taking sewage out of London in 1865 in response to a cholera epidemic and a particular stifling summer along the banks of the polluted Thames referred to flatly as the Great Stink. The station was in operation until it was relieved by more modern treatment plants—that didn’t just disperse the problem, and sat derelict and neglected until just this month, reopening after extensive restoration, for visitors to explore and marvel at this feat of engineering.

you’ve been rick-rolled or carry on, constable

Despite increased scrutiny over the rhetoric of fear and derision and waning confidence in expert predictions and said experts presuming to dictate to the stakeholders how to vote, there was still a weight of shock and disappointment that many—at least vocal ones—were begrudging when those forecasts most dire, nor those pledges for prosperity everlasting for Brexit did not quite materialise. As if failing to recognise campaign promises for what they are or to remember what it is that politicians do, no one seemed quite sure what to make of a Ship of State that managed to navigate around both Scylla and Charybdis pretty much unscathed, at least in the immediate aftermath.
I cannot judge whether it was the correct decision or what the narrow margins mean, but insofar that Britain is not instantly free of the yoke of the EU nor neither financially imperilled over this choice, I do think the lack of confirmation of either the worst- or best-case scenarios and the failure (or vulnerability) of public sentiment to be turned by feckless forecasting—no side could truly know what the consequences would—is justification to call for a second referendum on the same subject. I feel it is the same arrogant presumptions that garners distrust in the words of experts that would ask people to second-guess themselves (invalidating or reaffirming their motivations), possibly fuelled by the same outrage and exaggeration of sore-losers, and ask them if they were sure that they wanted to vote that way. What do you think? Alea iacta est. Besides, the UK—in whole or in part, is not seeking a divorce from Europe, it’s rather separating itself from the policies and rules of the European Union, a big distinction. The EU is not Europe, but rather an economic and political experiment—with a raft of rules and regulations that have little to do with identity or partnership, and is not exactly treating the UK like a customer that is trying to switch service-providers. I think we will be exploring more of these models of undo and redo as the national election season creeps closer.

gruen transfer oder ghost malls

Going home every week, I pass by signs of the future local of “Barbarossa City” shopping centre, that I am supposing will be erected outside of the industrial park of the ancient town of Gelnhausen—home to one of the emperor’s palatial estates, and it makes me moan a little to think about the state of property development in Germany. There perhaps was a legitimate pitch to be made at one point but once there comes a saturation point when we only have ourselves to blame for siphoning off business from the Altstadt and Marktplatz, which still retain their charms, making online shopping commitment-free—delivered to your door via drone, and there quickly comes a point where the appeal and utility of galleries “anchored” by ample parking and a super-market diminishes to the point it’s no longer tenable.
Every other purchase made in the client stores is really just an impulse-buy and the domain who those who couldn’t be bothered to comparison- shop beforehand. There are several ghost malls—completely vacant or nearly so, that are one the periphery of Wiesbaden’s city centre and while the former has been kept because of it auto-garage for as long as I can remember, I’ve watched the rather sharp decline of the latter, whose retail spaces are ninety-percent empty and random (by not a rotation) of car rental outlets, a stationary shop, a t-shirt screen-printing business and a ubiquitous electronic store are all that are left. Even outside city limits, these projects seem designed for ruin after the developers, the barons have made their profit and saddled yet another middling-sized town with reticulated grocery store that steals commerce away from downtown and denying people the ability to shop—or at least the impression thereof, and leaving a landscape of struggling restaurants and shuttered corner shops, boutiques and antique shops to be replaced by mobile telephone and fast-food outlets. What do you think? I don’t care for this zombification, and given the parallel crisis in affordable housing, maybe such flagships of the retail sector might (or rather do) work if (when) they offered accommodation for living as well.