new year’s eve eve

H and I went to a village fete for the Winterval—actually to usher old the old year and make way for the new, granted a bit, ever so slightly early but I doubt that a community even could compete with the war-zone of firecrackers that typify New Year’s (Silvesternacht) revelry—around in and around the Kirchenburg (fortress church) complex which was illuminated with hundreds of candles and torches for the occasion.
One can find quite a few of these defensive structures in this area but this particular compound in Ostheim vor der Rhön constructed between 1400 and 1450 and outfitted to withstand a protracted siege and support a sizable amount of refugees is one of the largest and most elaborate in Germany.
After a few carols, mulled wine (Glühwein) and a word from the Burgermeister, a group of marksmen (well, members of the volunteer fire department) ascended the Waagglockenturm (originally a signal tower visible over a vast distance as a warning to the next settlement in case of attack) with hand-canons and fired off several incredibly loud volleys. We have shared glances of this place here and there before but soon we will treat you to the full, proper tour. 

10 – 10 till we break again

One of the latest book reviews from Hyperallergic introduces us to the unknown but rather familiar radio subculture of citizens’ bandwidth (CB) operators of 1970s and 80s UK.
Employing handles and coded toponyms that could be easily at home in the hobbyists’ current mode of communication, operators navigating the airwaves and sounding out fellow-enthusiasts wanted to remain anonymous—up to a certain extent since there was celebrity in these circles as in every endeavour, especially for the authorities—because while it was permissible to own such a radio receiver (subject to a licensing-fee, I imagine), it was against regulations to broadcast and considered piracy to do so.
Nonetheless, these networks of scofflaws persisted and sometimes arranged community gatherings so they could meet and mingle in person. To maintain aloofness from potential self-incrimination, attendees had calling-cards printed up to pass around with their handle and a bit about their broadcasting habits and haunts—eyeball cards or eyeballing the exchange was called to signify a face-to-face encounter. Be sure and check out the link above to learn more about these radio renegades and the profiles of the operators behind these aliases and the publication that is part of the new Four Corners Press Irregulars series.

genusvetenskap

Though slightly recanting an early statement that the Church of Sweden is to make God gender-neutral as sensationalism and ‘fake news’—oh what has that despicable dandiprat in the White House wrought—despite a significant shift in attitude and acceptance, another congregation in Västerås has definitely stirred some controversy and defends its decision to advertise for a Christmas mass (put out in the style of a birth announcement or a baby-shower) referring to Jesus with the pronoun “hen.” Though propelled into the fore of public discussion by being a marker indeterminacy and championed by people who do not identify themselves as gender-binary, the church is bringing up another important nuance in the language. Hen/he could also be used when the gender is unknown and the dean of the church is not questioning the identity of the historical figure but the fraught and friendly pronoun is also appropriate to use in circumstances where the gender of the person is irrelevant and it was in this sense the announcement was framed in the way it was. What do you think? Jesus’ sex or whether He is cisgender does not matter today especially, but that detail has been used chauvinistically to justify a long continuum of the patriarchal establishment to the detriment and continued inequality of women and in general those who don’t ascribe to convention.

祝你生日快乐

Accomplished self-trained pharmacist and educator from Ningbo and Nobel laureate for developing malaria treatments that have saved the lives of untold millions, Tu Youyou is celebrating her eighty-seventh birthday today. It can seem very confusing but I suppose it’s really quite a straightforward matter to wish her a happy one. Ms Tu relates that her given name comes from a verse in the Shih-ching (the Chinese book of classic poetry) that the deer bleat ‘youyou’ as they gaze on wild Artemisia (hao)—a type of sagebrush whose chemical derivative (artemisinin or qinghao su), Tu would come to discover, can be used as an anti-malarial drug.