Blown away to learn that the largest world map known from the Middle-Ages was created by nuns at Ebsotrf monastery in northern Germany. Sadly it was destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII, but a new exhibition has re-created it, and can be explored in a 3-d digital rendering here.
Loved this essay on the out-of-print book Frost Flowers on the Windows, written after a deep freeze in Chicago led a Swedish ex-pat to write on the parallels between the patterns of frost that grew across windows with those found in botany, with hints of spiritualism thrown in.
The Necklace
Take, from my palms, for joy, for ease,
A little honey, a little sun,
That we may obey Persephone's bees.
You can't untie a boat unmoored.
Fur-shod shadows can't be heard,
Nor terror, in this life, mastered.
Love, what's left for us, and of us, is this
Living remnant, loving revenant, brief kiss
Like a bee flying completed dying hiveless
To find in the forest's heart a home,
Night's never-ending hum,
Thriving on meadowsweet, mint, and time.
Take, for all that is good, for all that is gone,
That it may lie rough and real against your collarbone,
This string of bees, that once turned honey into sun.
(Novemeber 1920)
I love the photographs.