cantiche

Though well within our rights to read Purgatory and the Inferno described in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy (previously) as metaphorical there have been nonetheless earnest and noble attempts, as Open Culture informs, from the Renaissance to modern times to diagram and map out Dante’s decent, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, into the lands of the departed. Check out more charts and infographics that illustrated Dante’s vision of Hell at the link above.

deep state

The always brilliant Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a very interesting Cold War chronicle, an office artefact that I’m regretting not having taken up and created during my own tenure, something reminiscent of medieval manuscripts or the Bayeux tapestry. Click the images to enlarge.

An anonymous general schedule (GS) analyst and conscientious bureaucrat like myself working at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas back in the 1980s during the Reagan-era illuminated his government-issued desk calendar (something which I usually rejected for reasons of unnecessary clutter and not necessarily speaking to my organisational skills) noting momentous occasions, personal achievements and airing his grievances with higher headquarters. Find more months in detail documenting the decade at the link above.

a destiny pictures production

The pool of reporters gathered (including those who could speak Korean since apparently that iteration played before the English version) in Singapore covering the meeting between Trump and Kim could have been easily forgiven for thinking that the clip that heralded Trump’s entrance was a propaganda video crafted by the North, having a similar look and feel to it, when in fact this mess of a message was a gift that Trump had produced for Kim to mark the occasion of their historic summit.

Watch closely to spot the stock footage of a Trump property in Florida. No one is owning up to having cleared this for use in statecraft (especially after all those riffs on “America First” but [Insert Your Country Here] Second came out) and Trump attempted to preclude further questioning by saying that the effort could be recycled and reused for another country—possibly with Canada to get the action film treatment next.

legal-ade

Though we’re usually wary about posting such things as it’s just amplifying a company’s marketing gimmick, I do feel the sentiment in which it was presented on Kottke is a good one, bearing repeating.

Commenting on how a soft-drink manufacturer will pay the fines of young scoff-laws for operating lemonade stands over the summer without a permit (which—not to be a total kill-joy—are also required for reasons of health and safety) and relatedly how a pizzeria franchise (previously) has pledged to donate some of its proceeds to repairing potholes, the blogger lamented how corporations—which go to extremes to be stateless and unbeholden to any taxation that might help modernise legal frameworks and improve crumbling infrastructure—are now portraying themselves as heroes for offering a showy solution for a host of problems that they’ve helped to create in the first place.

father of many seeds

Unlike the Little Prince who considered them an existential threat to his tiny planet, we’ve been cultivators of baobabs for quite some time and have many clones around the house grown from errant leaves and branches and it was quite distressing and depressing to learn that after millennia of existence, we’re living through a time (with our much more modest lifespans) when many of Africa’s monumental trees have succumbed to the ill affects of manmade climate change. The title is the etymological root for the plant, borrowing from the Arabic name abū ḥibāb (أبو حباب). Hopefully it’s not too late for those majestic and sheltering landmarks that remain.

benedictine beatnik

A self-described “monknik,” Hyperallergic introduces us to the concrete poetry and cut-up style of Dom Sylvester Houédard, a Benedictine priest and theologian who regularly slipped away from his abbey in the Cotswolds to spend weekends in London, helping to inform the particular genre and scene.
Artfully presented and visually stunning, Houédard’s works are replete with religious references but reflect a view broader than his own tradition, having an affinity for Eastern philosophy as well. Like the poems of his friends and correspondents William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg (who objected to the label beatnik, coined by journalist Herb Caen after the launch of Sputnik), Houédard was interested in acquainting writer and reader “in maximum communication with minimum words,” composing terse and polished little stumbling blocks to cause one to question semantic trappings.

small blows

It’s vital to remember that in the face of dispiriting, soul-crushing contemporary civics and politics that we have allies against the forces of regression—and indeed allies worth celebrating, including the witty and insightful contributors to McSweeney’s. Since 2016, the publishing house has been offering a regular feature that helps cope with the paralysing apoplexy that uncivil discourse can bring about in an anthology of thoughtful, modest and inspiring essays on the theme of One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. Be sure to visit and indulge in their expansive archive fighting for social justice, for yourself and for the greater good.

it takes one to know one

We’ll see how much history is determined by the historic meeting between the leadership of the US and North Korea but it does already strike me as a little hollow and quite asymmetrical with the regime of Kim Jung-un being accorded the legitimatising recognition that it’s sought for some time and preternaturally under the same terms and conditions that Trump bewailed his predecessor as concessions to Iran, making America look weak and dopey.
Much in the same way that the Manchurian Candidate’s revolting behaviour has markedly improved the image of loveable, old war-criminal Bush II, not only does his eagerness to meet with Kim deflect attention from the hermit kingdom’s atrocious human rights standards (zero freedom of movement, zero freedom of speech and mandatory, universal adoration—not to give Dear Leader any more ideas) with the optics, this plum bargain asks little in concrete terms from North Korea while having US military presence on the peninsula characterised as “provocative” (after so much mutual sabre-rattling) and pledges to suspend large-scale training exercises with the South and Japan.