World, take note. If you want to make the most badass coat of arms in the world, you need the following five items:

1. A narwhal.
2. A caribou.
3. A house made of balanced, gigantic blocks of ice.
4. A giant pile of balanced stones.
5. Three types of flowers that SURVIVE IN ARCTIC TUNDRA ... NEXT TO AN ICEBERG.

Most readers probably are unaware (alas!) that
( Read more... )

I spent three whole days last weekend writing. For maybe the sixth time since my arrival in DC three years ago, I forewent seisiún at Nanny's to write. Yesterday and today, I wrote from the moment I finished dinner until after 1am ( Read more... )

It's amazing how every time I sit down and chip away at researching my Cultural Property paper, The News lobs me another Tragic Yet Handily Appropriate Item:

Exhibit A (as I was conducting preliminary research over spring break):
The Golden Mosque/Al-Askariya Shrine bombing

Exhibit B (now that I've started poring over law review articles ( Read more... )

Baltimore City Paper: Local Filmmaker Catherine Pancake Hopes to Bring the Devastation of Mountaintop Removal Mining to a Theater Near YouPancake's sister Ann - also a pro-mountain advocate - echoes what I've been trying to tell non-WVans for the last three years about the dangerous interaction of culture, stereotypes, and corporate colonialism in ( Read more... )

NYT Editorial: Wrongheaded Priorities for Berlin's Memorial PlanningThis may be the stupidest bit of Berlin's whole post-Wall city planning: tearing down the 30-year-old golden box that was the GDR's multi-functional Palace of the Republic (in addition to major government offices, it housed swimming pools, a gym, and other recreation centers). It ( Read more... )

I had three four main things to talk about in my Cultural Property paper:

1. The destruction of the Iraqi National Museum in April 2003, and the US Army's infamous failure to prevent it (compare with our successful protection of the Imam Ali shrine);
2. The occupation of Babylon, which involved rolling heavy vehicles over 2,600-year-old brick-paved streets ( Read more... )

On the off chance anyone's interested:

1. Journal Note: Roma and the Birth of Mass Expulsion Jurisprudence in the Council of Europe2. Cultural Property: The destruction of Iraqi heritage sites by current occupying forces ( Read more... )

In playing with my "Interests" list just now, I added "cultural heritage". Clicked on the link to see what communities I got.

One was a group for immigrants' descendants.
One was a group for white supremacists.

What?!?

Lookie lookie, someone in Bern heard I was coming and decided to open a Paul Klee Centre!

Swissinfo's breathless write-up on the Klee Centre. (Not to be confused with The Clay Center, another colossal failure very sad piece of cultural planning on the part of Charleston, WV.) From the Who Knew? Department:[Marketing director Mark Isler] added that ( Read more... )