Man in black seen from behind at a distance on a snowy beach with dark waters and largely cloudy sky
On the Baltic with the husband, keeping things spicy with some role-playing. I‘m Caspar David Friedrich, he’s Monk by the Sea.
Poster with Greek text showing a woman with short grey hair and glasses and a man in a purple velvet blazer who could be Jon Pertwee if you squinted
The sad departure of Bud Cort reminds me of this poster I saw years ago for a production of Harold and Maude in Athens. "So what if – hear me out – they were the same age?!"
Black dog with brown eyes and white muzzle lying on a Persian carpet
Black dog with brown eyes and white muzzle in front of a red fountain
Black dog with brown eyes and white muzzle with pink plastic cat's-ears headband on wooden floor looking up at camera
Shaggy black dog with brown eyes and white muzzle cuddling a toy dog on a faux fur
So apparently my family sent the tree as a memorial for our beloved pup *sniff* We were already calling it the Czarna Tree.
Ficus alli tree wrapped in plastic with two bamboo supports and the tall box it came on floorboards against a light sage wall
Just had a whole-ass tree in a box turn up on my doorstep with no indication of sender and am concerned it’s some kind of underworld warning. Nice tree though.
Thanks Frank.
Dog paw prints in fresh snow
💔
A black puppy in profile with brown eye, caramel highlights and fluffy ears, grass and trees in the background
A black dog with a red harness panting with a pink tongue against bright green grass on a sunny day
Interior shot against Christmas lights of a put-upon looking older black dog with grey around its muzzle and a Santa hat
Old black dog with grey muzzle and grey-and-black harness in snowy forest, sniffing a fallen tree
Czarna, 2011–2026. The best girl.
Under a very grey sky, the frozen River Spree in Berlin with a layer of snow, looking toward the ornate red-brick towers of the Oberbaumbrücke, behind it office blocks.
Can't remember ever seeing the Spree this frozen. No one venturing out on it, thankfully; there is a limit to even the Berliner's folly.
Originally published in 1894 and now available in English for the first time, Antisemitism features a range of interviews with prominent figures across Europe, revealing attitudes towards anti-Jewish hatred during a pivotal moment.
Read more: bit.ly/4nAEJdU #History #JewishStudies #JewishHistory
A few days ago, this old, half-blind dog was so ill that when I took her to the vet, I wasn’t sure I would be bringing her home again. And now here she is, running through the forest on a beautiful autumn morning like a furry little Lazarus. ❤️
Stan's back! In Germany they called him a comet. They return, don't they? (I'm not really a science guy)
A pink information panel headed “An evening with Magnus Hirschfeld” above the book covers for The Einstein of Sex by Daniel Brook and Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, to the left the details “15 October/20:00/Doors 19:39/Free entry”, to the right “with Daniel Brook & James J. Conway in conversation with Alexander Wells”
Berliners! Next Wednesday (15/10) at @curiousfoxbooks.bsky.social: hear @brookfiles.bsky.social talking about his new Magnus Hirschfeld bio, The Einstein of Sex, and me re my translation of Hirschfeld’s Berlin’s Third Sex, moderated by @ajbwells.bsky.social www.curiousfoxbooks.com/events
A book cover with the text The Einstein of Sex/Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld/Visionary of/Weimar Berlin/Daniel Brook against a black and white photo showing revellers at what is evidently a costume ball, some dressed formally, others in masks and wigs, including one person as Medusa with a headpiece of snakes. Magnus Hirschfeld holds hands with his partner, Karl Giese, who appears to be in drag. A pattern of hand-coloured circles occupies the rest of the cover, including a large pink circle interlocking with a smaller blue circle.
Daniel Brook’s The Einstein of Sex is outstanding – an insightful, expansive and compulsively readable biography that reflects Hirschfeld’s epochal significance as a visionary of sexuality, gender and ultimately race. I thought I knew a fair bit about Hirschfeld but I learned so much.
A pink information panel headed “An evening with Magnus Hirschfeld” above the book covers for The Einstein of Sex by Daniel Brook and Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, to the left the details “15 October/20:00/Doors 19:39/Free entry”, to the right “with Daniel Brook & James J. Conway in conversation with Alexander Wells”
Berliners! Next Wednesday (15/10) at @curiousfoxbooks.bsky.social: hear @brookfiles.bsky.social talking about his new Magnus Hirschfeld bio, The Einstein of Sex, and me re my translation of Hirschfeld’s Berlin’s Third Sex, moderated by @ajbwells.bsky.social www.curiousfoxbooks.com/events
A mountaintop with fir trees to the left and right of the frame, in the top left a dramatic sun casting rays onto the lake below, with buildings just visible on the far shore.
Monte Verità, looking down on Ascona and Lago Maggiore.
You know the feeling: you’re on a train deep in the Gotthard Tunnel but you MUST have risotto rice. Swiss railways got ya covered.
Red sign in a planted bed reading "Schön aber giftig/Bitte nicht berühren!" (Beautiful but poisonous/Please don't touch!)
Hedge cut in the shape of leering lantern-jawed ogre with a lawn, yellow house with shutters and partly cloudy daytime sky behind
#normalforbrandenburg
Sadly no – I would also love to know more!
Against a mulberry coloured wall, a carved silver-plated frame in portrait format topped by an owl on a stack of books within a pediment, with plants and flowers at the bottom left and right. The oil painting within the frame shows a sorcerer in a blue cloak reading from a book on the ground, tracing a sigil into the dirt within a gloomy half-ruined building, with columns holding up a vaulting ceiling, although one column is broken and topped by plant life. Around him are presumably the apparitions he has summoned. In the foreground is the skeleton of a dog, still standing, alongside broken jugs, and the skeleton of a man lying down. Above the broken column is a man hanged in a noose from a beam; a cat standing on the beam is defecating on the dead man’s head. Also hanging from the beam are monkey, and an owl watches from a perch attached to a column. Above the sorcerer a naked man is riding a flying goat through a hole in the wall toward the moonlight, behind the sorcerer we see demons, bats, a naked woman and flying snakes emerging from the pits of hell.
It was closing time at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart but this caught my eye on the way to the exit. “Magic Scene” 1740/1 by Andrea Locatelli – a macabre, occult scenario that really rewards close examination (death has not halted the hanged man’s indignities...). Fantastic custom frame, too.
Thank you!
@brynstole.bsky.social in The Berliner on August Endell’s The Beauty of the Metropolis (trans. me, pub. @uoftpress.bsky.social): “a meditation on aesthetics, shot through with musings and engaged in turn-of-the-century debates”
www.the-berliner.com/books/the-be...
Ooooh … my first fig leaf!
An open box showing a book with the title "Die Lebensreform/Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900" in green against an oil painting showing a naked young man flanked by a bare-breasted young woman with long auburn hair and green cloth blown by the wind and a blue skirt, and a dark-haired woman with an orange top and red skirt with her head turned away. They look to be striding into a better future.
Me: I’ve got a package coming today.
Husband (hopefully): Is it negative books?
It's only open for a few hours every Saturday. When I was there the last entry in the visitors' book was from two months prior ... Steffi is an even more niche taste than ever it seems.
In a curved glass case, a book in a Jugendstill design with the title MAXIMIN in gold within a gold design with thin vertical lines, a triangle and flame-like motifs against an ivory-coloured background. To the right of the book, a label: "'Maximin'/Ein Gedenkbuch/Herausgegeben von/Stefan George/Berlin 1907"
@johncoulthart.com, I saw one of these in the wild* and thought of you.
* the Stefan George Museum in Bingen, which was actually pretty wild. Lots of Melchior Lechter designs.
A long view through the wooden frame of the Gradierwerk, in the foreground a view of the grey-black brushwood panels with water trickling down them.
The idea is that if you have respiratory problems (and you can’t make it to the sea, which is a long way from here), the salty air will help. So you’re sitting on a bench on a surreally long wooden frame, looking out at grapevines and smelling sea air. It’s very, very odd.
It is essentially a framework with a raised deck, and at deck height are huge panels of brushwood twigs compressed to make a mesh, down which runs salt water pumped up from a natural saline aquifer. The water evaporates as it trickles, and the resulting vapour has a very high salt content.
Under a blue sky, a view of one side of the Gradierwerk, a wooden frame with a raised platform and dark panels, her with a small wooden turret, in the foreground a stream with plants either side.
Angled view of most of one side of the Gradierwerk, showing an extremely long wooden structure with dark wooden panels, at the far end a hill with grapevines and a small white chapel, in the foreground a curving stream with reeds and a curving pathway.
… but it is very difficult to describe, so bear with me. We are looking at the “Gradierwerk”, a spa facility in the form of an immensely long wooden structure – 333 metres long, *one third of a kilometre*, dating from the mid-19th century.
Grape vines in rows under a blue sky with hills in the distance.
… you continue on to open fields and your shape-shifting conveyance is now effectively a cross-country train, vineyards come into view and you arrive in the town of Bad Dürkheim. And there it is …
