Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, souvenirs, personal projects.
-| May 2022 |-
PIXELS DISPATCH
The seat of national power, Kyiv was the main prize. Thus the thrust by elite airborne forces in the war’s opening hours.
When President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of buildup on Ukraine’s borders, he sent hundreds of helicopter-borne commandos — the best of the best of Russia’s “spetsnaz” (special forces soldiers) — to assault and seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep.
On the first morning of the war, Russian Mi-8 assault helicopters soared south toward Kyiv on a mission to attack Hostomel airfield on the northwest outskirts of the capital. By capturing the airfield, also known as Antonov airport, the Russians planned to establish a base from which to fly in more troops and light armored vehicles within striking distance of the heart of the nation’s largest city. It didn’t work that way. Several Russian helicopters were reported to be hit by missiles even before they got to Hostomel, and once settled in at the airfield they suffered heavy losses from artillery fire.
The fact that the Hostomel assault by the Russian 45th Guards Special Purpose Airborne Brigade faltered might not stand out in retrospect if the broader Russian effort had improved from that point. But it did not. ... Last week the Russians abandoned Hostomel airfield as part of a wholesale retreat into Belarus and Russia.
An effort to take control of a military airbase in Vasylkiv south of Kyiv also met stiff resistance and reportedly saw several Russian Il-76 heavy-lift transport planes carrying paratroopers downed by Ukrainian defenses.
A sidelight of the battle for Kyiv was the widely reported saga of a Russian resupply convoy that stretched dozens of miles along a main roadway toward the capital. It initially seemed to be a worrisome sign for the Ukrainians, but they managed to attack elements of the convoy, which had limited off-road capability and thus eventually dispersed or otherwise became a non-factor in the fight. “They never really provided a resupply of any value to Russian forces that were assembling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The Ukrainians put a stop to that convoy pretty quickly by being very nimble, knocking out bridges, hitting lead vehicles and stopping their movement.” Using a wide array of Western arms, including Javelin portable anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and much more.
“That’s a really bad combination if you want to conquer a country,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University. “[The Russian Army]’s proven itself to be wholly incapable of conducting modern armored warfare”. ... Some analysts did question whether Putin appreciated how much Ukraine’s forces had gained from Western training that intensified after Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and incursion into the Donbas.
“It’s stunning,” said military historian Frederick Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War, who says he knows of no parallel to a major military power like Russia invading a country at the time of its choosing and failing so utterly. The Russians underestimated the number of troops they would need and showed “an astonishing inability” to perform basic military functions.
Putin failed to achieve his goal of quickly crushing Ukraine’s outgunned and outnumbered army. The Russians were ill-prepared for Ukrainian resistance, proved incapable of adjusting to setbacks, failed to effectively combine air and land operations, misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend its skies, and bungled basic military functions like planning and executing the movement of supplies.
ON the 18th and 19th of November the [Russia and Austria] army advanced two days’ march, and the [French] enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the 19th a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning of the 20th, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
UNTIL midday on the 19th the activity, the eager talk, running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants, was confined to the Emperor’s headquarters (i.e., Alexander I of Russia). But on the afternoon of that day this activity reached [General of the Russian Army] Kutuzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the 19th to the 20th the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.
THE concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed, was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower-clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cog-wheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
JUST as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighbouring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it, and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak, and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
JUST as in a clock the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French – all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm – was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors – that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
Tata Innovation Center on Roosevelt Island, designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architecture.
Sitting on the East River in New York is a cigarette-shaped island, two miles long and under a quarter-mile wide. Known then as Mason's Island, it was a yellowed blade of neglected farms. Today, the island has a new name, where a five-acre plot is home to Cornell Tech Campus, sitting among restored woods and wetlands.
± New Zealand
Ringed by extinct volcanoes, Auckland looks east over Hauraki Gulf to the horizon. + Billboard on the way to the airport.
Located in the North Island of New Zealand, home to the largest Polynesian population in the world, and where the Symonds St Cemetery gives context to when this port-of-call was a ‘fledging colonial country’.
± Brazil
National Museum of Brazil vanishing. +Luzia’ is twelve thousand years old. She is the oldest person in South America, and now has lost 20% of her skull.
A fire on September 2 2018 gutted the National Museum of Brazil, turning a million art objects into ash and smoke. Gone are collections on paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, and indigenous Brazilian ethnology. Disappeared is a wing devoted to ancient Egypt, including a throne room.
Mostly intact is the second largest space rock on Earth. The Bendegó meteorite was discovered in 1784 by a boy in Monte Santo, Bahia. ... Watch a 38-min. documentary from 2019 of the retrieval phase; in Brazilian-Portuguese.
± Western Australia
Aerial view of the coast to Western Australia. + 2016 Super Moon over Perth. + Geode from Mammoth Cave, a 1,600-ft wide by 98-ft deep limestone cavern.
Yagan Square honors the fourteen Noongar language peoples of Western Australia. + Repurposed building in William St downtown, detail of original façade with a modern topping. + Plaque for J. Crothers Perth, constructing Western Australia since 1896.
Spanda, a carbon fiber sculpture by Christian de Vietri, can be seen at Elisabeth Quay on the Swan River.
± Reno
Vintage hot rod cruises N. Virginia St. + St Francis Hotel (1925) used to be where visitors roomed while seeking a divorce.
The city of Reno in Nevada came into being around 1852 by western-bound settlers chose a spot along the Truckee River, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then, when nearby Virginia City struck silver, someone built a toll bridge across the Truckee River. This new route allowed for an easier to and from the California Trail, and the spot became known as Lake’s Crossing. The First Transcontinental Railroad would make Reno a depot, and the Lincoln Highway system connected the city via automobile with the rest of the United States.
Reno is now a city of casinos. Watch six minutes of 1953 in color, featuring neon signs, one-armed bandits, and Harold’s Club and the Ship Bar, when the Nevada state speed limit was 25mph.
± Four Corners
Spanning the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii ‘valley of the rocks’ is home to Navajo people. Monument Valley is also non-federal territory and a park, where sandstone formations ‘rise into the air’. The entrance by way of Utah, on U.S. Highway 163.
± Great Barrier Reef
Pages from ‘The Great Barrier Reef of Australia’ (1893) by William Saville-Kent.
Found in the Coral Sea off Queensland on the north-east coast of Australia, part of indigenous spirituality, a built structure, the largest one in the world made by living organisms, this World Heritage site comprises some 900 islands and 2,900+ individual reefs.
± Osaka
The Sun descends over an 18th-c. roadway to give way to 21st-c. Osaka night, a jumbo colony of joined cities, the ‘kitchen of Japan’, where nineteen million people call home. The ‘megalopolis of water’ has an underground city of arcades, cafés, and people movers to get around.
± Paris
The last mass of the day was in session when a fire alarm went off. It was Monday during Holy Week 2019; and mass resumed when nothing was found. Thirty minutes later a second fire alarm went off: the attic was on fire. Soon the roof of the world’s most famous cathedral, built between 1163-1345, was burning. The spire then snapped and collapsed into the inferno. Response arrived, just ‘fifteen to thirty minutes’ away from the complete destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.
An onsite journalist witnessed Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade, running into the burning church and saving the Crown of Thorns. Bought by Louis IX in 1239, and believed to be the one worn by Jesus Christ.
+ (excerpt) ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1831) by Victor Hugo. ❝He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him—he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.❞
An 1859 model, made for architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, of the spire sitting on the wooden-beamed roof, known to habitués as the ‘forest’.
± Prague
The construction of Charles Bridge in 14th-c. Prague took up 45 years. Built of stone, this span over the Vitava River became, until 1841, the only ‘solid-land’ trade route between eastern and western Europe.
± PNG
Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, looks southeast over the Gulf of Papua to the Coral Sea.
Motuans were the original people. To trade with others in the Gulf of Papua, expeditions of up to 600-men would embark on sea voyages.
+ (excerpt) In his autobiography ‘My Wicked, Wicked Ways’ (1959), actor Errol Flynn describes sailing to Port Moresby in 1930: ❝We piloted our ship into the rather fine harbor of Port Moresby. We arrived during the rainy season and the whole area was brilliant green. The region seemed beautiful to me and I poked around searching its resources. About thirty miles from the port the Laloki River flowed through an emerald countryside. I fell in love with it. My partners made their way back to Australia, but I decided to settle there. ... Around me, from Laloki to Port Moresby, was a territory plentiful with nutmeg, rattan cane, the okari nut, bananas, mangrove, coconuts, and sandalwood. There was fish in the river, and the natives brought food to my door. For a pence or two I could have the fruit of the region.❞
HOUSES OF THE HOLY [PROLOGUE] In the aftermath of the trojan war, olympians carried on the fight with each other. This brief theomachia roused mother Earth, once more, into open revolt. Egypt disappeared into a ‘screaming wind’. Chthonic Ge then vomited out the contents of her vaults, most had been imprisoned by her grandson Zeus. These freed-again monsters (fourth class) promptly attacked the olympians and set in motion gigantomachia 2.0.
•❚-❚-❚•
Up north, another aesir-vanir conflict was brewing and so ripples from the graeco-roman court succeeded in triggering Ragnarok 15.0 – sending nine worlds and twelve hells toppling into a winnowing wormhole.
•❚-❚-❚•
Ge then picked up mount Olympus and threw it at Ouranos -- giving father Sky his famous black-eye. Perturbed unto his hydrogen heart, first-gen titan Hyperion left of his own volition, and in 1948 the solar god stepped down from the Sun. The gravity :throne then went, firstly, to that ‘container of multitudes’, the complex god Apollon. Soon enough it was ceded to Helius, as outer manifestation of the occult one.
•❚-❚-❚•
Before long mother Earth had curled up and succumbed to catatonia. Then atomic bomb testing during the 20th century did her further harm.
•❚-❚-❚•
What didn’t climb out of mother Earth was finally shaken off in spasms, clearing out her caverns and emptying all of the hells that she knew about. The last to depart Tartarus with the keys were infernal deities Haides and his titan-aunt Hekate, making sure all gates were left open and left unguarded.
•❚-❚-❚•
Nereus had actually felt little when the Earth performed her cosmic cough, and so the ‘Mediterranean’ had remained placid. His aboriginal root matter being H-two-oh, ‘the old one’ soon began splashing some of it over the exposed parts of Ge, initiating a tidal rite to soothe his beloved, his grandmother, his only home.
•❚-❚-❚•
Marooned on a chunk when Pangea broke apart -- then began to drift south, indigenes clung on and ended up on another shore under another sun. Looking at summer skies w/ wintry eyes, these originals saw the physical, spiritual and mortal planes clearer and earlier than most of their lost brethren. Now they will be best friends with Ge and help prepare her bedding every evening.
•❚-❚-❚•
Before going separate ways, Hyperion held a meeting with dog-headed Hekate. The senior Sun knew that she was the real ruler of Tartarus, and so sought advice from the goddess of necromancy on the omens for the next aeon. Together they conjured up a hypothetical heaven searchable by taxonomy. On this map they began to identify each spherical body paying heed to the gravity :throne, and tagged them as ‘wanderers’; the rest, misshapened things, as ‘drfiters’.
Inexonerably, the ‘dweller on high’ and the ‘crone of the underworld’ then took their leave.
❝ To ensure no favored location in space, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity, which is Edwin Hubble’s way of saying the universe must be pretty much alike everywhere and in all directions. ❞
– Ronald W Clark (1971)
❡
As the latest geomachia began to subside, tumbling thrones from celestial courts once more are steadied. Some just needed a hand, others maybe a mend. Wrecks, though, got tossed. Soon enough, a four-dimensional mythological map of the sky began to make clearer sense. Whereas the ancient order had adhered to the ‘invariable plane’ when paying homage to the Sun, newcomers need no longer do so. Established courts were delighted -- or not, to locate kin, meet oddballs, greet faded goddesses, share secret handshakes with progenitors, and perhaps gawk at their carbon copies.
•❚-❚-❚•
In the beginning was love, so this house tour begins with Aphrodite. Stung by the treatment mother Earth meted out to her own brood, the love goddess had no recourse but to leave, becoming the last olympian to do so.
•❚-❚-❚•
The ‘one who postpones old age’ moved her foam :throne closer to Helius and, in 2002, gathered mothers to graces Eurydome and Euanthe to her love :court. Now they share advice and guidance with the sex goddess and sit on the venerable :throne and mirror :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Their neice Pasithee had previously awoken to a planetary party still in full swing. She had called her aunts seeking some peace and quiet. Pasithee was married to Hypnos, and as the grace of relaxation, always carries sachets of daydreams. Knowing this, Euanthe and Eurydome said Yes, come over.
•❚-❚-❚•
Grace of beauty Kale had become unhinged by the expulsion from Earth, and so was offered the tender :throne until and if she can find closure.
•❚-❚-❚•
Taking baby steps is Eros⁴, the first form to step out of oblivion and greet Khaos. The love god’s name is now spelled differently by different scribes.
His latest iteration is a jigsaw puzzle of four asteroids. Shattered like he’s shattered hearts, the ‘first born’ mutters sweet-nothing rites while resting his golden wings sitting on the soul :throne, in hopes of achieving a home once more in mortal breasts.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1999, Lempo returned to the nektar :throne. Of undetermined sex, this finnish love deity was seen to pass near Aphrodite, murmur “once bitten twice shy” in her general direction.
•❚-❚-❚•
Then the ‘handsome one’ came to set up a love :embassy. Adonis had insisted, even though scientists say he’s a potentially hazardous asteroid and his exes claim that he is an extinct comet and a source of meteor showers, but that was before Helene showed up 1980, a dione trojan gone awol.
•❚-❚-❚•
Known to ancient sky watchers, during a time when the hard-to-spot ‘guide’ was easier to locate, his elusive nature suits well Hermes, the nearest house to the Sun.
The ‘trickster god’ is awash in sulfer in a temperature hot enough to melt lead, as he finishes an orbit every 88 days while pirouetting every sixteen, just long enough to cause seasons.
•❚-❚-❚•
Working in conjuction with cyclops lenses scanning the sky with rainbow eyes (and finds machines of every shape and size), the ‘shepherd of men’ hosts a divine missing bureau, staffed with refusniks from International Astronomical Union’s minor planet center, all having degrees in dark matter 3.0, are familiar with artificial atoms as well as time leakage, littoral linguistics, and the roots of rap.
Prowess shown by these latter-day saints allow the ‘messenger of the gods’ to roam and see everyone, meet everything; the
‘patron to the home’ is
seldom at home.
•❚-❚-❚•
Jennyblue has run the bureau since 1982.
She is the gazetteer of planetary nomenclature for the IAU, and the publisher of Who’s World.
•❚-❚-❚•
Second-gen titan Atlas lifts up worlds to look beneath. Bro Epimetheus likes to rehash stuff to sift out clues, and Sisyphus retraces steps to glean origin stories.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Icarus surfs outer space with glued-on wings, finding ‘drifter’ not yet catalogued, and looking for star shepherd Hesperus, who vanished while on assignment.
•❚-❚-❚•
Then a piece of Hermes came back in 1937 as an apollo asteroid.
•❚-❚-❚•
Since 1999, none can assign a proper myth to an amnesiac. Until then, Setebos is their sole “wayfinder of wanderers and drifters”.
•❚-❚-❚•
Paying heed to the measure of duration and the reel of the zodiac, the moon :crown currently rests on the brow of Artemis,
granting a glimpse to mortals as they gargle “how the air unlit before glows”.
•❚-❚-❚•
‘She of the wild’ has to fill three (rotating) placements: full :throne, old :throne, and the new :throne. The ‘virgin goddess’ then cuts the lunar deck and picks faded lunar goddess Phoebe. Artemis cuts again and reveals cretan harvest goddess Carme. A third pick produces Diana. There was a small problem. The visible moon goddess is currently locked in Time, cannot be detected – and is considered a phased phantom. This breach is now filled in by Eos, the winged dawn goddess who pulls back the curtain of Night, bringing to an end the latest balancing act that is life in houses of triple-mooon goddesses.
•❚-❚-❚•
A viscuous veil has been draped on the purity :throne when, in 1845, innocence goddess Astraea sat down on it for the first time.
•❚-❚-❚•
The ideal deity arrived in 2002, ascending to the triple :throne on four legs. Tarvos is (the sole) male carbon to triple-mooon goddesses. He is also a divine bull, among other eyebrow raisers.
•❚-❚-❚•
Pan spent the waning days of the 20th century checking out the house of the Moon, and now the rustic god is very much at home. Delirious with desire, surrounded by dwarf moons, moonlets, moonmoons; sported with by packs of ring shepherds holding hands with shepherd moons. “Where the bee sips there sip I. In a cow slip’s lips I die.”.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1610,
Ganymede came out as the largest satellite in the sky, and therefore was a shoo-in to run the moon :embassy.
In his down time, the deified son of Tros will take a walk with Skoll, to re-acquaint the norse wolf to Night.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
The werewolf :throne went to moon god Tarqeq; he’s good to animals, sweet-natured, and knows a lot about inuit fertility rites.
•❚-❚-❚• Sitting on the bow :throne since 2000 is Mundilfari, father to the norse moon god.
•❚-❚-❚•
In solidarity with the hexed and mighty vexed Diana, embassy invites always go out to her niece Pasiphäe, cousin Hekate, and BFF Hera.
•❚-❚-❚•
Each evening Artemis dons a monotone-&-mottled bodysuit shimmering with crater rays. Before stepping on the moon :chariot, she puts on a sheer cape with an upside-down waterfall perpetually shedding dust
.
•❚-❚-❚•
Under an injured sky mortals had clung on to mother Earth and prayed for mercy. She must have relented because the human race survived, too insignificant perhaps to be shaken off.
•❚-❚-❚•
The grateful folk then
resolutely reimagined how temples should function and, restoring important altars first, enticed elder goddess Dione to be the first to come back. The second-gen titaness and oak goddess first laid out the house of Terra in 1684, and sits now on the oracle :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Faded jötunn Bestla was reasoned with to also come back and sit on the mountain :throne, while the anxious one awaits news on missing son Odin.
•❚-❚-❚•
Nereus, who invented hydrotherapy, is now plain tuckered. The ‘first man’ has been tending to the rehabilitation of Ge and can often be seen when not on duty splayed out on the aborigine :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
All this while, paramount pantheon pharaoh Amun gleams and twits unobtrusively on the dust :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Sedna had hesitated to sit on the winter :throne only ’cause the inuit sea goddess had to come that much closer to the Sun. Already her skin of tightly-grouped nitrogen icicles and reflective methane scales, fixed w/ dark tholin thread, has turned beet red.
•❚-❚-❚•
Prosperity goddess Orthosie is sometimes busy, sometimes not, scattering tawny seeds from the autumn :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Dionysus knows there’s hope for Ge. The mad god, now a binary-being, sits on the serpent :throne, the “price of a bend sinister many generations back”.
•❚-❚-❚•
Persephone would rather be with her mom than here at the 4-seasons :court.
But the vegetation goddess would rather be here on the spring :throne than with her husband in hell and be known as ‘queen of the damned’.
•❚-❚-❚•
Weywot stepped out of the Kuiper belt in 2007. Now this native-american sky god gets to take in an exponential view from the summer :throne.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1980, ‘first woman’ came back home and set up the 4-seasons :embassy. Twelve years later, ‘first man’ of the north joined her. Theirs is a mobile office, so Pandora and Ymir can go questing to verify a site map based on interviews with Hekate and Hyperion.
•❚-❚-❚•
Mother Earth spends her days outdoors and her nights on the chthon :throne. She seems okay, and occupies herself building a genealogy for Aither and wrting a bio on the atmosphere.
•❚-❚-❚•
First her roman-half came in 1867; then a greek-fragment showed up in 1917. At that point Athene went ahead with the triple accretion rite and, alongside Minerva and Pallas, became again the ‘gray-eyed’ goddess of wisdom, albeit thriced.
The goddess of crafts nicknames her house the Olympia Academy, graduating space cadets since 1953 in disciplines of mind, body and soul, with emphasis on tech-chthonics, the emergent metaverse, and why obscure dimensions necessarily lurk.
•❚-❚-❚•
Skill requiring dexterity is taught by Dactyl, a fused presence able to separate back into ten beings: sibling brothers and sisters adept in teaching metallurgy and magick.
•❚-❚-❚•
Lutetia was insubstantial when found, originally sent to the morgue for parts. Until a proble revealed ‘primordial paris’ under the mantle. Now this asteroid houses the library, founded in 1904 by golden-age historian Himalia.
•❚-❚-❚•
‘Father of history’ Herodotos is somewhere in the stacks; sometimes he“s a crater, sometimes a lunar mountain.
•❚-❚-❚•
Faded sun god Hyperion still has his star :throne, yet the patron saint of astronomy prefers it here, shedding light into obscure passages and untangling conjugal conjecturals.
•❚-❚-❚•
With eyes wide shut, dream god Morpheus wanders the library, never bumps into anything.
•❚-❚-❚•
Patroclus stopped by in 1906 to build and run the gymnasium; then Menoetius was outed as his satellite in 2001.
•❚-❚-❚•
And maybe it’s true that jötunn Jarnsaxa rose in rank by sleeping with Thor, yet her prowess as a warrior is second to none; she now teaches warcracft at the Olympia Academy.
•❚-❚-❚•
Hylonome was recruited in 1995 to give lessons in archery and horseback riding.
•❚-❚-❚•
When Hideo Itokawa showed up in 1998, no one paid much heed. Now the rocket scientist has a launchpad and a lab on the roof.
•❚-❚-❚•
Scholar Zhongguo arrived in 1928 toting mountains of chinese scrolls and occupies a whole wing.
•❚-❚-❚•
An amorphous cradle court found harbor in a forgotten nook stacked to the rafters with old globes. Granted seclusion while these river deities adjust to their new situation are Euphrates and Tigris, gleaming still from the embers of the 20th century.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1884, nymph to a baby god Ida was admitted to the infirmary, injured and living a half-life. When Zeus found out his nurse was alive he went to fetch the mountain maid, since mended, and seated her on the oak :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Then the thunder god came across wife Juno and they made up and now the sky goddess has agreed to return to the marriage :throne and resume her title as ‘queen of the gods’.
•❚-❚-❚•
But before that Zeus stumbled into Europa, floating by aimlessly. Promising not to transform in front of her again, Zeus persuaded the princess of Tyre to claim the azure :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Callisto came and established the sky :embassy in 1610. Elder muses Aoede and Thelxinoë showed up, 400 years later, to clear up backlogs and overstuffed inboxes. Seasons spirit Sponde joined in 2003, imposed strict lunch breaks.
•❚-❚-❚•
They are joined by the mother to wine god Dionysus, who sits on the rain :throne when not lending the embassy a hand. Born mortal, Thyone is now deified and who presides over dionysian displays.
•❚-❚-❚•
A tempestuous sky :court re-opened in 1979 when faded goddess of wisdom Metis convened the first meeting from her blessed :throne; but now the first wife to Zeus has fallen into a trance.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Zeus has a complex ionosphere tuned to his liking while resting on the eagle :throne, where a planet-encasing electric field ratchets up the magnetic field to produce 400,000 electron volts.
In 1988 a chunk of Zeus buzzed the earth, and '5731-Zeus' has now been identified as an apollo asteroid.
•❚-❚-❚•
This house also serves as a courthouse, and Kronos is its chief justice. Consort Rhea, now a binary being, shares the mountain :throne with her roman half Cybele. In 1966, they warmly welcomed roman god of good beginnings Janus to the duty :throne. The twin-faced god who gave his name to the first month performs the rite to open each judiciary season.
•❚-❚-❚•
Holding degrees in truth and zoroastrian light, galaxy god Mithra was brought in 1987 to the seasons :throne. It only took Themis 34 years to find her roman-half Justitia and perform the accretion rite. Now the goddesses of divine justice share the seed :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Elder memory muse Mneme came out of retirement to run the law library, assisted by Hermione, mortal daughter to Helen of Troy and Menelaus.
•❚-❚-❚•
Fate goddess Tyche got her law license in 1886, but for precision goddess Praxidike it took much longer.
•❚-❚-❚•
Young aten asteroid Ra-Shalom, spiffy in a smooth carbonaceous outfit, interns as law clerk.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
The time :embassy dispenses legal counsel, and staff constantly juggle worn volumes for titles and to parse multi-culti edits, to look up one-offs, and ‘misc’.
•❚-❚-❚•
Kronos hosts 62 satellites and it makes him a grump when on the flint :throne. The king of the titans wears a ginormous stole of frozen helium and iced hydrogens, hiding lashings by wet methane winds and seasonal hurricanes of methane mists.
•❚-❚-❚•
Wounded in a minimachia between Zeus and Kronos, Ouranos hoarded his sanity and had sense remaining to locate complex Hathor and bring the destined one to her sky :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
The egyptian sky goddess has smart dial, and that is how it came to be that mother to Atlas Klymene sits now on the dome :throne. Watching these two gossip and laugh is venezuelan rain god Huya, from the vantage of the cloud :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Before fully succumbing to his malaise, Ouranos managed also to locate Arrokoth to sit on the empyrean :throne, knowing the powhatan personification of the sky can summon clouds, which is the least of his aether abilities.
•❚-❚-❚•
There is no embassy at the house of Uranus, and its chief occupant has been under physician care since 1781. The physician in turn commissioned magician Prospero to devise a suitable therapeutic play for a primordial patient.
•❚-❚-❚•
Which led to father to Loki Farbauti being impressario of the production, and who hired Ixion as lighting director, even though the ex-king was caked in tholins and ice.
•❚-❚-❚•
An ending conjuration required a dual-voice, and director Didymos will perform this role, guiding post-polyphonics gently back to roots in tragic theater.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Puck and Ariel designed the special effects, while Sycorax and her spawn Caliban handled all subterranean spells. This for a play that takes 84 years to perform.
•❚-❚-❚•
Poseidon chose the date of his resurfacing back into history by sending a dream, in 1846, to a sleeping mathematician. The woke mortal entered a new set of coordinates into the New Berlin Observatory and found the liquid liege sitting on his trident :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
It was first-gen titaness Tethys, though, who first set up the court, back in 1684, in her capacity as ‘sovereign of the sea’. The ancient marine goddess sits on the sea :throne and is semi-retired, running a cell of neptune trojans beholden only to her.
•❚-❚-❚•
Primeval marine goddess Siarnaq, mother to all inuit sea life, rests now on the whale :throne.
•❚-❚-❚• Aegir swam by to take “only a peek”. He was then persuaded to stay by Tethys, by Siarnaq, by the entire embassy staff. The germanic god now holds a set of hurricane keys and billows on the storm :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Triton is running the sea :embassy. The mer-god first surfaced in 1846, encrusted in barnacles, showcasing cryovolcanism and cantaloupe-colored boils, spewing nitrogen five miles into space from frigid fingertips of methane.
The ‘messenger of the sea’ is currently sick with an unknown malady. But Salacia does. Since 2004, the ‘queen of the sea’ has been testing and correcting local salinity levels, bringing much needed knowhow to alleviate demi seagoddess Lysithea, who has also been trying, since 1938.
•❚-❚-❚•
Day-to-day is handled by by demi seagoddess Hermippe, oceanide Telesto, and river spirits Io and Callirrhoe.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Nereid glimmered under the surface of Night, in 1949, a drop only 210 miles, clad in neutral-ices and silicates. Troubling then to know that this amalgam of 50 sibling sea goddesses is also a potentially hazardous object headed for a fatal impact with the sea :embassy.
•❚-❚-❚•
Like Ouranos, Haides lies on his back; unlike his great-grandfather, the king of the underworld is in command of his senses. He reigns once more from the black :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Showing off a young mantle, as befits his status as the first trans-neptune object, the ‘great renewer’ goes about in a liquid-cape of frozen nitrogen stained with landscapes of ruddy pinks and moldy yellows.
•❚-❚-❚•
The dead :throne belongs to fury Tisiphone, she of the scorpion whip. Often awol, the primitive vengeance goddess likes to visit BFF Hekate.
•❚-❚-❚•
Haides had spared two brothers from their fate in the aftermath of the gigantomachia, when a hundred siblings attacked Olympus. Now Enceladus, encased in complex organic molecules, and Mimas, fitted out in dreams, have repaid the king of the dead by running his death :embassy, constructed from the substructure of space and having capacity for many-sided folds.
•❚-❚-❚•
Juggling with pulsar power since 2000 is inuit Ijiraq.
When not on the wealth :throne
the shapeshifter is elusive in a sulphurous smoke jacket, bounding from comet to asteroid while flinging out mirages left and right.
•❚-❚-❚•
Charon only became apparent in 1978, a representation of a god of hell, paddles around on the blood :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Complex deity Osiris, silent and still and hiding out on the shadow :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Fenrir crouches at the foot of the black :throne, munching on thanatos leaves.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
An aeon in Tartarus had caused a set of siblings, as they were hurled into space, to begin an acretion rite and then, in 1655, return as a colossal composite. Now back in comfortable surroundings again, Titan has grown star-fat and nova-lazy. This slovenness vanishes when his secret name is uttered. Then the fused thing sits upright on the unseen :throne; and resumes his role as monster third-class.
•❚-❚-❚•
The pond of Pontos is an inert multiple axis dimensional facility where serpent spawns from water worlds can find safe harbor – and malevolent vipers suitably quartered.
•❚-❚-❚•
Its longest inhabitant is Medusa, marooned on a spit since 1875. Her nurse is demi-serpent Herse, who gets to milk the gorgon. Medusa’s blood is taken back to the infirmary where it is an ingredient for end-of-life syrups.
•❚-❚-❚•
The egyptian carbon to Khaos had escaped during early dawn of the 21st century. That was when the‘uncreator’ assumed the form of an aten asteroid. Now Apophis is threatening to invade Ge come 2029 before launching another attack on the Sun. To bing and bring back this sand serpent supreme, the house of Egypt dispatched fire goddess Sekmet (who’s pregnant), and magick goddess Selquet.
•❚-❚-❚•
Aegaeon has been pond shepherd since 2008, this monster fourth-class (although some claim he’s really the first monster), has now poured all his wealth into Sea 2.0. The primitive marine god oversees Force⁴, staffed by post-fledglings from stellar kindergartens and polygon-flight schools.
•❚-❚-❚•
The pond is a favorite haunt of Hippocamp, when the binary-beast is not harnessed to the sea chariot, and kidding around with Hydra, which seems to do the many-headed serpent some good. This amalgamated animal has gone mad; harms only itself, hops on claws then slithers, undergoing a chaotic rotation with a flip every ten hours.
•❚-❚-❚•
The newest inmate is ducktaped with reverse-relativity adhesive, preventing Gonggong 龚工 from powering up his malignant core. This metal-headed monster was caught trying to knock mother Earth’s axis off center -- again. Now the chinese marine god is the subject of study by atomic-physics.
The wannabe planet killer has been guarded since 2007 by husband-&-wife team Phorcys and Ceto. He grey-haired and fish-tailed, with a crustacean-cape of crab claws. She daughter to Pontos and crone goddess to sea monsters.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Draped in seaweed, crowned with turrets and towers, a rudder his staff, Pontos is seawater’s root matter. He now stirs Sea 2.0, concocted with a thimble of his blood, the entire Aegean sea, a steady drip from the river of hate, a healthy pour of unadulterated reptilian consciousness; as well as trickles from the river Styx.
•❚-❚-❚•
To ensure safety, the pond is potted with skeletal Time chambers. To nice things up, infernal goddess Styx had trained a ribbon from her river of oaths to follow her and that is how the okeanide became patron to the pond of Pontos.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 2018, an undersea ex-palace was requisitioned as the unofficial house of Pontos. Diamond-shaped with good japanese bones, Ryugu is capacious enough to have offices, guard quarters, private apartments.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
After the meeting with Hyperion, the supreme goddess of magick took her leave, dragging ‘darkness’ behind, and only stopped when the gravity :throne was barely noticeable.
The daughter to titans Perses and Asteria then flung Erebus beneath her, unfolded the crone :throne, set it down on the head of the dark primitive god.
•❚-❚-❚•
Hekate is darker than Tartarus, where she had her palace, is invisible at night, can see in pitch black.
•❚-❚-❚•
Ananke came first, in 1951, swathed in ‘constraint’, ‘force’ and ‘necessity’.
‘One before time’ uncoils her luxuriant serpent tail and gets to wind down on the potency :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
A son to Loki perches on the ghost :;throne: Narvi is father to norse night Nótt and has returned as dark matter of indeterminate size.
•❚-❚-❚•
Tottering on the spindle :throne is night goddess Nyx, whose star-spangled mantle cannot hide that something has gone wrong when alien gravity flooded the daughter to Khaos, and now she twirls backward every 45 minutes, wrapped in bandages with obvious ancient red stains.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 2004, etruscan infernal god
Orcus showed up to claim the victory :throne, oblique in faint tholins, sewn with iced crystal water and featuring a high collar shooting dew drops of amonia up.
•❚-❚-❚•
When the three-headed hell hound saw Erebus, his dearest doghouse, being dragged off, Kereberos trotted behind; now he patrols his new home every 32 days, flips every five, in vain efforts to shake off filament fleas.
•❚-❚-❚•
As Ge shook and coughed, Aἴtnē was unbothered, as befits one of nine foundational mountain nymphs. She’s been host to aboriginal fire god Hephaistosfor a long long time. The son to Zeus and Juno had suffered some diminishment when Ge last shook, otherwise is unscathed.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 2006, Surtur, wielder of the fire sword, showed up. Following notebooks and using legacy tools, the jötunn worked with Hephaistos and got the forge going again. Now the norse behemoth tends to business from his spot on the foundry :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Pasiphäe is daughter to the sea and the sun, and this hybrid origin is only one of the reasons the mistress of herbal magick keeps busy on the cauldron :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
The geomachia had casualties, but Hestia was not one of them.
The primal fire goddess gingerly cupped ‘first flame’ in her palms, slipped on sensible shoes, and stepped off the face of the Earth.
•❚-❚-❚•
In the Asteroid belt she found her sister Ceres, who was seeding the second Garden of Apollon, and Hygiea, performing triage by herself in a makeshift manner. Hestia sat her charge gently down and soon enough kindled a fire.
•❚-❚-❚•
Together the three goddesses set up a clinic. By 1807 it had grown to become an infirmary. Then, in 1992, while live coverage of the first space rock found in the Kuiper belt was broadcast, Hestia took a closer look and recognized Albion. The domestic goddess then went and fetched ‘mythological britain’ back and that was how she found a foundation to her house, with herself its administrator, medicine goddess Hygiea its head nurse, and agrarian goddess Ceres its groundskeeper.
•❚-❚-❚•
Resident chaplain duties falls on the shifting shoulders of fiction-into-fact inuit shaman Paaliaq.
•❚-❚-❚•
Newly dislodged norse fire god Loge was admitted in 2006 for hypothermia. Therapy with ‘first flame’, his root matter, ensured recovery and now the brother to a wind god has stayed on as a heat therapist.
•❚-❚-❚•
Asclepius was admitted as a wounded apollo asteroid in 1989; now the medicine god is partly repaired and has assumed the role of head physician, allowing daughter Hygiea to fuse with her roman-half Valetudo as well as resume research into evolutionary vaccines.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Celtic childbirth goddess Bebhionn showed up in 2000 and now there is a maternity ward.
•-❚-❚-•
Eight of Poseidon’s satellites are in intensive care.
Faded sea goddess Thalassa wobbles and paces her bed every eight hours, knowing her form will end up as a rubble ring.
•❚-❚-❚•
Galatea and her water-nymph siblings are all of unreliable form; they’ve re-accreted once too often, and now Sao, Neso, Laomedeia, Helimede, Psamathe might all end up as rubble rings too.
•❚-❚-❚•
Priestess Despina is missing parts, and has set aside mysteries of arkadian cults for now.
•❚-❚-❚•
Hawai‘ian birth goddess Haumea and her daughter-moons were admitted in 2004. This ‘collisional family’ has reached the danger point of offing each other.
•❚-❚-❚•
The first patient was admitted in 1983. Phaëthon had fallen off his father’s sun :chariot.
•❚-❚-❚•
Founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale came back in 2017 to run the nurse stations. Eager to learn modern methods are ancient nurses to baby gods Cyllene, Kallichore, Helike, and Kalke.
•❚-❚-❚•
The grounds of the second Garden to Apollon, begun in 1801 to eventually surround the infirmary, now has pasture enough for goat nurse to a baby god Amalthea to retire in tranquility since arriving in 1892. Her minder is mountain nymph Daphnis. •❚-❚-❚•
Come autumn they will help seasonal goddess Carpo and native-american corn goddess Atira assess the bounty from Nature 2.3. •❚-❚-❚•
And when the granaries are full autumn grace Hegemone will moan the closing rites. •❚-❚-❚•
Harvest was possible because Flora had first tended to every petal and abundance goddess Euporie to every stalk.
•❚-❚-❚•
Creator god Quaoar was helping out in 2005 when he caught a flu. Now the father to the native-american sky shivers and tosses every seventeen hours, wrapped in red rocks ribbed in carbon monoxide sewn with methane threads, buttoned with nitrogen and studded with stalagtites of iced ethane.
•❚-❚-❚•
Aitolian princess Leda has a green thumb and likes working in the Garden of Apollon. Otherwise she has been helping Demeter run tests, since 1801, to gague exactly how many seasons now exist.
•❚-❚-❚•
A fused nation of freshwater nymphs, Naiad, maintains the water features on the grounds, while demi sea goddesses Isonoe and Sinope assist in its boundaries.
•❚-❚-❚•
Frost giant Suttungr will wait until he’s brewed enough mead of poetry to fill a thousand space ships before coming by to replenish the well.
•❚-❚-❚•
An unrecognizable queen of Egypt came to the Intensive Care Unit in 1880, and after Kleopatra was put back together she remained and, with her moon-children Cleoselene and Alexhelios, set up a pharmacy. •❚-❚-❚•
Pharaoh Khufu came in 1984 and claims he’s watched enough priests grind gold and think up immortality tinctures to consider himself a pharmacist too, and stayed. •❚-❚-❚•
Rustic Pan drops by and sings along with Aretha Franklin, who appeared in 2018 with a piano on her bracelet. The queen of soul also duets with spirit of lamentation Linus and together find closure notes. •❚-❚-❚•
Poetry muse Erato used to wander the corridors strumming; now she has an office and better hours.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1980, a morgue was founded by Prometheus as an experiment to develop human being 3.0. The titan of forethought was also delving into mystikal graeco-egy proto-chem while practising old-school alchemy. He also tinkers with two corpses. Primeval sky goddess Theia has been dead a long time now, and missing parts. The first-gen titan still has bits of Ge imbedded in her body. There is also jötunn Greip, who came in 2006 and is good only for parts.
•❚-❚-❚•
Assisting in the morgue is young frost giant Bergelmir, descended from aboriginals, grandson to the first norse man, and knows something about creating new life. •❚-❚-❚•
The morgue has been home to Proteus since 1989, and the marine god donates his root matter for parts, even though the shapeshifter has parchment skin containing transparencies and pockmarked with polyhedron-shaped ices and pinkish-red boils.
•❚-❚-❚•
Beginning in 1918 and spending the next 14 years performing an accretion :rite, Helios had attracted sufficient material to return as the apollo asteroid named Apollo, the first of his kind. The ‘sun’ then continued to evolve and has now ascended to the gravity :throne and is known as the ‘eldest flame’.
•❚-❚-❚•
Spending 282 years on an orbital rite while on the blind :throne, galaxy being Varuna pivots outwards to greet stray vedic cosmic creeds.
•❚-❚-❚•
When this mythic bird flew down to perch on the arrow :throne in 1999, Bennu was still an apollo asteroid; now he’s the nexus between egyptian rebirth, creation and the gravity :throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Complex easter island deity Makemake arrived in 2005 to occupy the singular gold :throne, and was seen retrieving a charcoal-dark satellite from his spacecraft.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1998, aten asteroid Akhenaten arrived and opened the sun :embassy. Competency in dusty dynasties shows – he continually posts welcomes to unexpected deities showing up to greet the Sun.
•❚-❚-❚•
The post-pharaoh can pronounce the Helius’s name in gallic, celtic, inuit, sanskrit, finnish, mandarin and egyptian-arabic, his native tongue.
Soon a course in japanese and spanish, maybe a brush up on latin. He’s onto rumors of a pan-ocean court coalescing around the 2016 discovery of Kamo‘oalewa ‘oscillating fragment’. And still figuring Venezuela out.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Akhenaten is lucky to have found Arche in 2004. The origins muse knows where the skeletons lie – also where they lived.
•❚-❚-❚•
Norse wolf Hati accompanies her, making sure all skeletons behave.
•❚-❚-❚•
Second-gen titaness Leto has the sun :throne, and since 1861 the mother to a sun and a moon has enacted a solar rite, every fifteen hours, to the ‘the supreme light’.
•❚-❚-❚•
The House of Mars defends the celestial court and is responsible for
Fortress Pallas Athena, sited on the circumference and facing outer space. At the “crown” is a co-command of gallic and roman military gods. Albiorix will make a 783-day patrol guarding the Sun, clad in ghost-red armor. Ares turns away from the gravity :throne and patrols interstellar space.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Trunks” watch the four quadrants. Hoary frost giant Fornjot, sire to norse immortals, scans the unknown diligently every seven to nine hours for missing kin. •❚-❚-❚•
Eris has a lonely patrol lasting 558 years. The sister to Ares is large enough to fit all on the Asteroid belt in her mantle; is easy to spot in her white-white frigid methane armor caped with trailing gasses.
•❚-❚-❚•
Humongous jötunn Thrymr, king of the norse giants, has a sense of humor.
He likes to share a good joke with Cruithne, tiniest of space rocks but whose stature in pict legend is also humongous.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Branches” handle logistics and coordinate the day-to-day. Hyrrokkin is capable of launching a thousand probes before breakfast, if the norse giantess so wishes. •❚-❚-❚•
Freya, BFF with the valkyries, rides into war on a chariot drawn by cats. On the battlefield the love goddess claims half the fallen and is a favorite among the troops. •❚-❚-❚•
Primeval gaul Erriapus oversees a quiet quadrant in a pale-red battlesuit; while god of the norse north wind Kari howls into his portion of the void.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Twigs” explore, and has despatched a team to follow magnetoplasma pulsing backward to its source. Battle-tested sons to Ares began service in 1877 higher up in command, but chafed at peacetime ennui and now have been demoted. These bad-boy bros wear their combat wounds proudly. •❚-❚-❚•
Deimos looks spiffy clad in smooth rock but it’s to protect his porous frame; he knows one day he’ll go awol. Pbobos is slowly dying; wearing nothing but rubble held together by the thinnest of mantles. •❚-❚-❚•
Their cousin anarchy goddess Dysnomia wears a dark-red battlesuit blending well with her background. While norse winter goddess Skathi gets to patrol the most frigid quadrant.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Leaves” wear special suits to traverse the metaverse, perform data reduction, and compile off-site cross-genealogy reports. •❚-❚-❚•
Kiviuq has been confronting creatures since before 2000; and is knowledgeable in i.d.-ing unknowns. Twins Romulus and Remus have brought along notes in order to finish a user’s guide to roman ways. •❚-❚-❚•
The founder-bros of Rome are a tad weary of Polydeuces, greek carbon to Remus, whose voice echoing in space hits too close to home.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Veins” cover the entire territory and carry the colors, led by two trojans and a pair of centaurs. •❚-❚-❚•
Cantering into view in 1977, married centaurs Cheiron and Chariklo led a comet corps of some 44,000 centaurs: each on a scattershot orbit, all trying to achieve escape velocity using nearby gravity as slingshots. Sporting irradiated armor under high-collared ices crinkling and shedding dew; each centaur has a lifespan lasting a few million years. •❚-❚-❚•
Clad in wine-red uniforms strung along two elongated curves, trojan asteroids marched into view in 1906 behind Achilles and Hektor.
•❚-❚-❚•
Fortress Pallas Athena has a “seed bank” in the Olympia Academy, and a “root system” laid out in various houses.
•❚-❚-❚•
Harmonia is daughter to Ares and runs his house, happy to be near cousin Dysnomia, brothers Deimos and Phobos, and aunt Eris.
•❚-❚-❚•
The race of cyclops were not flung into space, having instinct enough to cling on. The second monsters born to the ‘primordial couple’ flourished by evolving the craft of lens-polishing.
Then, during the birth of the 21st century, these three one-eyed brothers downloaded their DNA into artificial intelligence vats. Now the cyclops race exist mainly as rows of lensii arrayed in patterns and spending much time inside telescopes.
Telescopes sit on an equatorial mount, where a clock-drive moves the telescope at the same rate as planetary rotation.
•❚-❚-❚•
The house of the ‘round eye’ has been run by its blinded host Polyphemus (long story) since 2013.
•❚-❚-❚•
A unique egyptian sun disk came in 1976, after rehabilitation by Hephaistos. Now Aten is fully rehabilitated from a stony sub-mile space rock to be a source of intelligent light.
•❚-❚-❚•
Muse of astronomy Eukalade arrived in 2003 to ensure quality control and to create a web presence.
•❚-❚-❚•
Development of lens technology led to a vaster view of the “mysterious universe”.
In 1924, using the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, astronomers Edwin Powell Hubble and George Ellery Hale observed individual stars some 800,000 light-years away; then billions of light-years away.
•❚-❚-❚• Leaving mother Earth had proven traumatic for Ares, so he unleashed his rage and demolished the nearest planet. The military god buried the remains in the backyard, the cemetery known as the
Asteroid belt (1801).
•❚-❚-❚•
By 1845, four of these remains had been spotted by telescopes. Each was dubbed a planet at the time. Then their tiny size, less than 500 miles wide – smaller than the Moon, lead to a new classification of such irregular space rocks as an
asteroid.
•❚-❚-❚•
Another kind of irregular space rock whips through space on a a unique orbit around the Sun, iced rocks enveloped in dust and trailing gas, the nimble
comet .
•❚-❚-❚•
An asteroid or a comet caught in Ge’s gravity field becomes a
meteor ‘high in the air’. It remains a meteor if it doesn’t land, and becomes a meteorite if it does.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1950, Hekate and Haides showed up at the house of the Sun and told everyone there what they had seen in their backyards in 1992.
Trans-neptune objects, billions of them. The rulers of the underworld had come to the gravity:throne to announce the demise of the old order. A new aeon was descending and the adamantine age was over.
•❚-❚-❚•
Quite by accident Zeus had a spat w/ Kronos over throne placements. This mini-machia flipped Ouranos on his back and caused the trident:throne to rock and roll. Casualties from this tussle all have missing chunks and bloody cuts. They are the ‘frozen forgots’, marinating in blue-grey bruises and strewn about in a region called the
Kuiper belt
(1992).
•❚-❚-❚•
As Ouranos toppled over Poseidon threw out a life line, but it was too late. The ‘earth shaker’ instead whipped wavelengths into a froth and the resultant fury crashed against his trident:throne, carrying what flaked off into a sparse province inhabited by unstable iced comets called the
Scattered disc (1966).
•❚-❚-❚•
Haides had been exploring his backyard as early as 2004. In his golden chariot drawn by four black horses, the infernal god crossed the Kuiper belt and encountered termination shock -- before settling into a (brief) standstill during heliopause. The king of shadows then unsheathed his sword to cleave the hydrogen wall to get to the other side. Then was stunned by bow shock which sent the god of wealth plunging through the
Interstellar medium
(1904) until the Oort cloud began to cushion his landing.
•❚-❚-❚•
As the trident:throne was tossed about it had smacked into something substantial and shattered this obstruction. Parts now populate the Kuiper belt, fragments share room inside the Scattered disc, and the bits, frozen filaments of water and methane, flew even further out and is credited as the
Oort cloud (1950).
•❚-❚-❚•
A space rock that is spherical and containing gravity and an electro-magnetic field is a
planet
. Most planets host a satellite or more, and eight planets follow the 'invariable plane' and constitute venerable houses represented at the celestial court.
•❚-❚-❚•
Made of ambient matter and having no definite boundary, Helius the
Sun is a star w/ the capacity to shed root matter as energy, released rapidly enough as to seem solid, and can assume diverse forms. Earth’s Sun undergoes ongoing combustion, and has gravitational sway over a small swaddle of space, it’s
heliosphere.
•❚-❚-❚•
2012-VP113 nicknamed
‘Biden’ is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt located by a dark energy camera mounted on a telescope in Chile, enlarging the boundaries of the celestial court overnight.
❧ Astronomer William Herschel spots fairy royalty through his telescope and tries to catch them all w/ his butterfly-net, TITANIA and OBERON, Queen MAB, others.
1808 Act I Scene 1 – Forest, daylight ❧ Although it is 1948, MIRANDA isn’t aware because she’s lost in Time, and she absent-mindedly perturbs a rotation rite being initiated by ARIEL, PUCK. A cosmic cave materializes in the lower air; inside the witch SYCORAX and her spawn CALIBAN are seen to mumble and hum.
1829 Act I Scene 2 – Forest, twilight ❧ Fashion-plate BELINDA strolls on in 1986 to introduce a cavalcade of stars. Venetian heriess PORTIA is sharing a joke w/ ROSALIND , daughter to a banished duke; CORDELIA and OPHELIA are linking fingers, touching foreheads, laughing softly; BIANCA is being practical watching her step while giving life tips to CRESSIDA; DESDEMONA and JULIET whisper and act distraught. Slowpokes MARGARET and PERDITA bring up the rear.
1850 Act II Scene 1 – Forest, evening ❧ Male voices from 1990 approach. Shy inquiries are proffered by prince of Naples FERDINAND and his lord FRANCISCO on the who, what, when, where, and why. Meanwhile jester TRINCULO is lending support to drunk-asleep STEPHANO, who now wants to mingle. Chit-chat strums the air and blends w/ sonic spells from the cosmic cave as the Sun starts to sink.
1871 Act II Scene 2 – Forest, midnight ❧ Both parties are now asleep. Sprites and fairies flit across the air. A glint “no bigger than an agate-stone” arrives w/ news for the pained planet Ouranos. The sound of her voice is the signal for Puck to begin matching Ariel’s trajectory and speed before taking charge and bringing the rotation:rite to its conclusion. SETEBOS begins a slow descent onto stage, IXION turns down the stage lights, and the double-voice of DIDYMOS intones the concluding conjuration. Bringing the curtain down on Prospero’s Play, written as a medicinal for an ailing aboriginal, prescribed by the patient’s physician Asclepius.
•❚-❚-❚•
The latest Ragnarok was precipitated by the Ge’s cosmic cough. When the dust settled, out of an impressive wreck a chasm appeared, and Niflheim once more took a peek at Muspelheim.
•❚-❚-❚•
In the first moments of the 21st century, Mundilfari, father to a sun and a moon, slowly shifted inside the frozen depth and took a good gulp of space vacuum. Then he hoisted himself out of the crevice, he managed to also yank out root-matter Ymir from his prison. Breaking up enough ice to expose chief-giant Thrymr. Snow goddess Skathi and frost giant Suttungr were harder to make out; they themselves were made of frozen water.
•❚-❚-❚•
Then these remnants of the long-unseen norse court presented themselves at the house of Kronos, seeking shelter, and were immediately given a wing. In 1886, the god of time deputized fate goddess Tyche to set about freeing the others. She led a rescue team of ring-shepherds carrying their own satellites and returned, in 2019, w/ 14 alives and 17 parts.
1 ...
The first war
ever waged involved norse gods battling each other at the dawning of time. The root cause could well have been lax magick capitalizing on auguries to determine an end result for one’s destiny. Truce ended the
Aesir-Vanir War
and resulted in a pooled pantheon spanning nine realms.
2 ...
By the time Ge and Ouranos, the primordial couple,
drew close and birthed their third brood, mother Earth had been nursing revenge on father Sky for nixing her previous two litters. Now the aboriginal earth goddess took the youngest under her tutelage, bestowing on Kronos his destiny to perform the dirty deed with a sickle and take over the adamantine throne. After committing patricide, Kronos married sister Rhea and the union produced three daughters and three sons -- who would overthrow their parents in the ten-year
Titanomachia, fought alongside earthquakes and volcanoes -- and prequel to the age of Olympus.
3 ...
When Saturn cut Uranos w/ the sickle blood splashed onto Gaia,
trickled down to Tartarus and birthed one hundred giants, w/ serpents for feet. They climbed out of their mother and warred against Olympus. Formidable and capable of hurling entire mountains into the air; by so doing formed a ladder to the top. Breaking off oak trees and using them as torches, these giants climbed up and flung them at Zeus, igniting the
Gigantomachia
. One by one, the olympians put down their gigantic sibling’ revolt, offing or impaling them w/ mountains.
4 ...
Upset her giants were defeated, Gaia rubbed Tartarus and soon birthed Typhöeus, tall enough to graze the stars, sporting wings which blotted out light, having a hundred dragon heads spewing flames w/ mouths that yelled out human curses or shrieking and hissing as animals. Two hundred hands all ending in snake-fingers. Loose snakes slithered and covered the final monster’s frame, from the thighs down this singular serpent was nothing but trunks and feet of coiled snakes. Alone, the largest monster ever born launched
Typhomachia and attacked Zeus, who defeated him in single combat and chained the volcano demon, belcher of venomous fumes and all-round trouble maker to sky deities, in deepest Tartarus.
5 ...
As the trojan war unspooled
Olympus took sides and soon a battle between the immortal family had erupted. This brief
Theomachia ended when the war happening on Earth did too, and every deity survived the ordeal.
6 ...
Fracking was driving Ge bonkers.
She could bare it no more. Swallowing rocks and imprisoning monsters she had performed in the primitive past. Now mother Earth had a fever and required a deep cleanse. She coughed, ejecting her bowels and flushing out her bad blood, in her latest
Geomachia.
7 ...
Foretold as a repeatable occurrence, the twilight of the gods arrives when several severe blizzard storms one after the next are loosened on the world. Norse sun goddess Sól’s brief re-emergence will signal the beginning of the end as
Ragnarok commences. The midgard serpent will then crawl from hell followed by her brother the wolf Fenrir. Soon, Surtur’s flame sword will have set the universe ablaze, “the sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, hot stars fall from the sky, and fire leaps high about heaven itself ”. In time a new Earth. Another Sun. Different stars. Same pantheon.
The seat of national power, Kyiv was the main prize. Thus the thrust by elite airborne forces in the war’s opening hours.
When President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of buildup on Ukraine’s borders, he sent hundreds of helicopter-borne commandos — the best of the best of Russia’s “spetsnaz” (special forces soldiers) — to assault and seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep.
On the first morning of the war, Russian Mi-8 assault helicopters soared south toward Kyiv on a mission to attack Hostomel airfield on the northwest outskirts of the capital. By capturing the airfield, also known as Antonov airport, the Russians planned to establish a base from which to fly in more troops and light armored vehicles within striking distance of the heart of the nation’s largest city. It didn’t work that way. Several Russian helicopters were reported to be hit by missiles even before they got to Hostomel, and once settled in at the airfield they suffered heavy losses from artillery fire.
The fact that the Hostomel assault by the Russian 45th Guards Special Purpose Airborne Brigade faltered might not stand out in retrospect if the broader Russian effort had improved from that point. But it did not. ... Last week the Russians abandoned Hostomel airfield as part of a wholesale retreat into Belarus and Russia.
An effort to take control of a military airbase in Vasylkiv south of Kyiv also met stiff resistance and reportedly saw several Russian Il-76 heavy-lift transport planes carrying paratroopers downed by Ukrainian defenses.
A sidelight of the battle for Kyiv was the widely reported saga of a Russian resupply convoy that stretched dozens of miles along a main roadway toward the capital. It initially seemed to be a worrisome sign for the Ukrainians, but they managed to attack elements of the convoy, which had limited off-road capability and thus eventually dispersed or otherwise became a non-factor in the fight. “They never really provided a resupply of any value to Russian forces that were assembling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The Ukrainians put a stop to that convoy pretty quickly by being very nimble, knocking out bridges, hitting lead vehicles and stopping their movement.” Using a wide array of Western arms, including Javelin portable anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and much more.
“That’s a really bad combination if you want to conquer a country,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University. “[The Russian Army]’s proven itself to be wholly incapable of conducting modern armored warfare”. ... Some analysts did question whether Putin appreciated how much Ukraine’s forces had gained from Western training that intensified after Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and incursion into the Donbas.
“It’s stunning,” said military historian Frederick Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War, who says he knows of no parallel to a major military power like Russia invading a country at the time of its choosing and failing so utterly. The Russians underestimated the number of troops they would need and showed “an astonishing inability” to perform basic military functions.
Putin failed to achieve his goal of quickly crushing Ukraine’s outgunned and outnumbered army. The Russians were ill-prepared for Ukrainian resistance, proved incapable of adjusting to setbacks, failed to effectively combine air and land operations, misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend its skies, and bungled basic military functions like planning and executing the movement of supplies.
ON the 18th and 19th of November the [Russia and Austria] army advanced two days’ march, and the [French] enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the 19th a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning of the 20th, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
UNTIL midday on the 19th the activity, the eager talk, running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants, was confined to the Emperor’s headquarters (i.e., Alexander I of Russia). But on the afternoon of that day this activity reached [General of the Russian Army] Kutuzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the 19th to the 20th the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.
THE concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed, was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower-clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cog-wheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
JUST as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighbouring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it, and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak, and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
JUST as in a clock the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French – all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm – was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors – that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
Tata Innovation Center on Roosevelt Island, designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architecture.
Sitting on the East River in New York is a cigarette-shaped island, two miles long and under a quarter-mile wide. Known then as Mason’s Island, it was a yellowed blade of neglected farms. Today, the island has a new name, where a five-acre plot is home to Cornell Tech Campus, sitting among restored woods and wetlands.
± New Zealand
Ringed by extinct volcanoes, Auckland looks east over Hauraki Gulf to the horizon. + Billboard on the way to the airport.
Located in the North Island of New Zealand, home to the largest Polynesian population in the world, and where the Symonds St Cemetery gives context to when this port-of-call was a ‘fledging colonial country’.
± Brazil
National Museum of Brazil vanishing. +Luzia’ is twelve thousand years old. She is the oldest person in South America, and now has lost 20% of her skull.
A fire on September 2 2018 gutted the National Museum of Brazil, turning a million art objects into ash and smoke. Gone are collections on paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, and indigenous Brazilian ethnology. Disappeared is a wing devoted to ancient Egypt, including a throne room.
Mostly intact is the second largest space rock on Earth. The Bendegó meteorite was discovered in 1784 by a boy in Monte Santo, Bahia. ... Watch a 38-min. documentary from 2019 of the retrieval phase; in Brazilian-Portuguese.
± Western Australia
Aerial view of the coast to Western Australia. + 2016 Super Moon over Perth. + Geode from Mammoth Cave, a 1,600-ft wide by 98-ft deep limestone cavern.
Yagan Square honors the fourteen Noongar language peoples of Western Australia. + Repurposed building in William St downtown, detail of original façade with a modern topping. + Plaque for J. Crothers Perth, constructing Western Australia since 1896.
Spanda, a carbon fiber sculpture by Christian de Vietri, can be seen at Elisabeth Quay on the Swan River.
± Reno
Vintage hot rod cruises N. Virginia St. + St Francis Hotel (1925) used to be where visitors roomed while seeking a divorce.
The city of Reno in Nevada came into being around 1852 by western-bound settlers chose a spot along the Truckee River, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then, when nearby Virginia City struck silver, someone built a toll bridge across the Truckee River. This new route allowed for an easier to and from the California Trail, and the spot became known as Lake’s Crossing. The First Transcontinental Railroad would make Reno a depot, and the Lincoln Highway system connected the city via automobile with the rest of the United States.
Reno is now a city of casinos. Watch six minutes of 1953 in color, featuring neon signs, one-armed bandits, and Harold’s Club and the Ship Bar, when the Nevada state speed limit was 25mph.
± Four Corners
Spanning the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii ‘valley of the rocks’ is home to Navajo people. Monument Valley is also non-federal territory and a park, where sandstone formations ‘rise into the air’. The entrance by way of Utah, on U.S. Highway 163.
± Great Barrier Reef
Pages from ‘The Great Barrier Reef of Australia’ (1893) by William Saville-Kent.
Found in the Coral Sea off Queensland on the north-east coast of Australia, part of indigenous spirituality, a built structure, the largest one in the world made by living organisms, this World Heritage site comprises some 900 islands and 2,900+ individual reefs.
± Osaka
The Sun descends over an 18th-c. roadway to give way to 21st-c. Osaka night, a jumbo colony of joined cities, the ‘kitchen of Japan’, where nineteen million people call home. The ‘megalopolis of water’ has an underground city of arcades, cafés, and people movers to get around.
± Paris
The last mass of the day was in session when a fire alarm went off. It was Monday during Holy Week 2019; and mass resumed when nothing was found. Thirty minutes later a second fire alarm went off: the attic was on fire. Soon the roof of the world’s most famous cathedral, built between 1163-1345, was burning. The spire then snapped and collapsed into the inferno. Response arrived, just ‘fifteen to thirty minutes’ away from the complete destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.
An onsite journalist witnessed Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade, running into the burning church and saving the Crown of Thorns. Bought by Louis IX in 1239, and believed to be the one worn by Jesus Christ.
+ (excerpt) ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1831) by Victor Hugo. ❝He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him—he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.❞
An 1859 model, made for architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, of the spire sitting on the wooden-beamed roof, known to habitués as the ‘forest’.
± Prague
The construction of Charles Bridge in 14th-c. Prague took up 45 years. Built of stone, this span over the Vitava River became, until 1841, the only ‘solid-land’ trade route between eastern and western Europe.
± PNG
Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, looks southeast over the Gulf of Papua to the Coral Sea.
Motuans were the original people. To trade with others in the Gulf of Papua, expeditions of up to 600-men would embark on sea voyages.
+ (excerpt) In his autobiography ‘My Wicked, Wicked Ways’ (1959), actor Errol Flynn describes sailing to Port Moresby in 1930: ❝We piloted our ship into the rather fine harbor of Port Moresby. We arrived during the rainy season and the whole area was brilliant green. The region seemed beautiful to me and I poked around searching its resources. About thirty miles from the port the Laloki River flowed through an emerald countryside. I fell in love with it. My partners made their way back to Australia, but I decided to settle there. ... Around me, from Laloki to Port Moresby, was a territory plentiful with nutmeg, rattan cane, the okari nut, bananas, mangrove, coconuts, and sandalwood. There was fish in the river, and the natives brought food to my door. For a pence or two I could have the fruit of the region.❞
Looking back at the Golden Age (which took place on Earth-Two), it has come to light that the biography of Lois Lane, beginning in the early 1950s, has properly belonged to the Silver Age.
All along, readers had grown up w/ a golden-age Lois. There was a golden-age Clark; and Superman too. It turns out there has been – and always has been – some other Lois, who lived on Earth-One, w/ another Clark and a different Superman.
In 1956, fan loyalty was rewarded when DC Comics put out the first issue of SUPERMAN’S GIRLFRIEND LOIS LANE. Once again, a newer Lois Lane sprang forth, and helped to usher in the Silver Age. This Lois again came fully formed – and a lived-in backstory spooled out. The first two tales, about a witch and a wig, looked forward towards the experimental 1960s -- when beauty was redefined, and backwards, w/ a ginned-up glance at the battle of the sexes, when it was still in black-&-white.
What is left of the original Lois are some stories about the Man of Steel in which she features prominently, where she proves herself an intellectual equal of a super man. These historic events embark embryonically from the heartland of America during the onset of World War II. They then roam globally, and extra-globally, only to disembarked at the untested outpost of the Cold War.
Lois of Earth-Two became marooned until the DC universe took on a reimagining. By 1978, her story was rethreaded into the continuity. Lois married Clark in the late 1950s, discovered his secret identity, went on to new adventures -- even after their son was born, passing the mortal coil in 2005, in events occurring during Infinite Crisis. All of this happened before the 21st century woke up.
I Love Lois
Working nine to five as a reporter for a city daily must not leave time to do much else. As a single female working and living alone in Metroplis, how do you find balance in your life?
Lois Lane, Clark Kent and Superman are the creations of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, two Cleveland teenagers nurturing keen tastes and quick psyches, who combined complementary skills to make manifest their dream of another world. Inventing a city of skyscrapers where an otherworldly creature lives and makes its living as a newspaperman, while wooing a wonderful woman, and using as his secret identity a coward’s persona. Overnight their comics become a bestseller, starring the Man of Tomorrow opposite Lois Lane.
Lois Lane is already there when Clark Kent arrives on his first day at the Daily Planet, she’s a lonely hearts advice columnist. Clark, a seasoned reporter, gets called in to the editor‘s office and is assigned a new beat. In a supreme act of irony, he’s to cover someone who has been seen in Metropolis and word has it a champion of the oppressed. Proximity to the vibrations of an unknown being notwithstanding, Lois soon slips into a vaudevillian vortex. Somehow a dastard is sure to create chaos, usually a damsel-in-distress episode plays out, acrobatic acts can follow before displays of unnatural skills bring back the normal. This and a secret identity plot to string it all together and tie into a bow.
Page after page, the reader gets to know more about a super-being living in Metropolis, while he himself is getting to know more about Lois -- exposing her to the maw of mayhem by his dada duels w/ weird foes. Lois can’t see Clark for the super-simulacrum that he’s hiding behind; is drawn to Superman instead. Clark smiles and winks at the fourth wall, at ease and worldly wise.
Lois and Clark start dating right away, in the first story they put on evening attire and go out on the town. The next week she flies off on assignment to a foreign land and, due to misadventure, ends up blindfolded and standing in front of a firing squad. Back home again, Lois thinks little of dropping a sleeping pill into Clark’s cocktail so as to chase a lead and beat him to a scoop. This brazen stunt backfires when she lands in trouble and, for the very first time, falls out of a window.
But first, she hones in on Clark’s beat by looking up the Man of Mystery herself, trying to score an exclusive. Going to a traveling circus where he was performing for charity, an unexpected occurrence ensures she will not get her scoop. Editor Perry White sometimes sends both out together, especially when murder has occurred. On these occasions, Lois often ends up solo because Clark can and will disappear at the first sign of trouble. One time this happened, she was tied down next to a table saw w/ the on-switch deployed, too annoyed though not surprised w/ Clark to bother about her imminent demise.
Chastened to live another day, Lois expands her comfort zone, finding it in herself to bring joy to a thawed caveman, out of time and gravely disoriented. Lois was as one reborn some other time when she ran around w/ a great ape. Through all this, Lois kept up her advice column, where once a grateful writer bequeathed a gold mine to her and which, sadly, she lost. She then plunged herself into a murky episode about a fifth columnist movement in Metropolis, wading into espionage, disinformation, and sabotage.
Around this time she meets Lex Luthor. Picking through the day’s press releases, Lois sees a tony and toothy one: Someone has called a gathering of the millionaires of Metropolis. Intrigued, Lois finds a way into the mansion and hides behind draperies. Eight men enter, followed by their host; Lois pulls out her notepad. Altogether, these men control railroads and airlines, real estate and financial firms. Each involved in prohibition-era rackets. One has a publishing firm hawking inspirational books. Another runs a secret fascist cell. The last to speak turns out to be a common man who had shown up disguised in order to give a rant on the wickedness of wealth. Lois is taking this all down, filling one comic book page w/ nine long speech balloons. When suddenly Luthor appears w/ a weapon and knocks everyone -- including Lois -- out.
By 1943, budding popularity for her character propels Lois onto the cover w/ Superman, gasping as he goes head-to-head with crime’s comedy king, the Prankster. Lois is also on the splash page, because she has inadvertently wandered too close to a giant jack-in-the-box … Then a year later lands her first series, LOIS LANE GIRL REPORTER, focusing on her exploits without Superman or Clark, which had a thirteen issue run.
The winds of change began blowing in the mid-1950s, when DC Comics rehabilitated a dormant character from the past and re- introduced Flash, giving him a new backstory and wearing a different costume. Gradually, this new universe folded outwards and at first divided into two.
In 1956, a seminal tale had taken place on Earth-One, where Barry Allen was working late one stormy night, when a lightning bolt comes crashing in, striking chemical vials filled w/ stuff. Barry is knocked out and falls to the floor. Lying in a suspicious-looking soup of laboratory juices the entire night, he undergoes a molecular sea change. What had lain on the lab floor that October night was a police-lab scientist. What woke up the next morning turned out to be an agile Adam – harbinger to a new aeon.
This refashioned “human thunderbolt” draws a chalk line at the starting point, resets the timer to zero, jumps into his costume and takes off. Soon enough he learns of the existence of Earth-Two, and he visits w/ the original Flash, semi-retired but still contending w/ super-foes.
Overnight, the aggregate number of costumed beings doubled -- then grew, as readers couldn‘t get enough.
The Lois of Earth-One lived a complicated existence, being routinely subjected to Imaginary Tales of what-ifs that bedevil storylines, confounding known facts w/ familiar fantasy. This Lois had her own title, which ran for 137 issues, ending just in time to usher in the Bronze Age, and are known chiefly as having imparted a level of light-heartedness to her life.
In between, Lois left her classic looks behind and is shown on a 1968 cover tearing down part of her own masthead containing the words "GIRL FRIEND", and throwing it to the ground. This was just one step less shocking than her get-up: knee-high go-go boots and a rocking aquanet hairdo, declaring that she was over the Man of Might.
This fit of feminist zeal subsided, though, and the designation reappeared on the next cover. Lois Lane, born on Earth, had up until then led an unearthly existence, all because she chose to be near the one she loves, and do battle w/ battalions of babes intent on becoming the one to make children w/ the alien Adonis.
★ As our story begins, Lois is about twenty-three years old, and Clark is two years older than that.
▶
Champion of the Oppressed Action Comics №1 - 1938
Lois Lane sprang into life fully formed, alongside the genesis story of Superman. On his first day at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent is smitten and begins to court Lois.
When Clark is then assigned to cover a mystery man showing remarkable potential, Lois is intrigued and goes on a first date to find out more.
Twirling about the dance floor, he asks pointedly,
“Why is it you always avoid me at the office?”
“Please Clark-! I’ve been scribbling sob stories all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.” Bored and staring away, her eyes happen to lock onto Butch, who’s been staring at her for quite some time.
Seeing his move Butch cuts in, then things turn ugly, and Lois gets an inkling that Clark may not be a man’s man.
When Butch facepalms her date she storms out and calls Clark, for the very first time, “… a spineless, unbearable coward!”. Catching up w/ the car that has just abducted her, Superman upturns the vehicle and catches Lois, for the very first time, as she spills out of the backseat window. What he does next is famously depicted on the iconic front cover - lifting the car above his head. ... turning his attention back to Lois, she backs away in mild terror until he says, “You needn’t be afraid of me. I won’t harm you.”
Transfixed, she lets the strapping stranger scoop her up into his arms and, leaping high, carry her away. This winning formula provided years of creative chaos as the three main characters circled each other round and round.
This ends the first tale of Lois Lane’s life, and the beginning of her startling adventures to document the existence of this mental marvel and physical wonder, devoted to daring deeds she knows will reshape the destiny of a world.
▶
How Lois Got Her Job Lois Lane №17 - 1960
(An Untold Story) (Demand Classic)
Every year on the anniversary of her first day to work for him, Perry White has thrown an office party to celebrate. One time he turned sentimental -- opened up: “... When Lois first asked me for a job, I told her I would hire her if she brought me three scoops in three days! She did it ... w/out Superman’s help!”
Picking up the cue, Lois blows out the candles and hands the first slice to Perry. While his mouth is full, she gives her side of the story. On the first day at work Perry had given her a choice of several assignments, she chose the easiest one: securing evidence on a team of safe-crackers.
Dressed as a cleaning lady, Lois walked into their lair w/ a vacuum cleaner, plugged it in, turned it on. This disguise turned up pure gold when a torn-up note was retrieved, then taped back together. Implications were deduced; arrest warrants eventually issued. More cake was passed around.
Her next assignment was to secure the first-ever photograph of a reclusive royal, prone to strongarm tactics to ensure his privacy -- she comes back w/ the photo. Clark and Jimmy ask for another slice -- at the same time.
The guest of honor takes this opportunity to sit down, staring into the cavern now developing in the cake. Her car had unexpectedly broken down on the third assignment, and she ended up walking miles out to nowhere in order to interview an archaeologist who was claiming a new discovery. She gets her story, and it’s a doozy but, w/ no easy access back, Lois devises the most ingenious method known to correspondents worldwide – enabling her post to reach Perry. It is front page news, and Lois lands her dream job.
▶
Man or Superman? Superman №17 - 1942
Lois and Clark once teamed up to track down the Talon, titular head to a gang of thieves. She later returned to her desk, thinking she was going to write up a scoop, only to learn that Clark got there first. Exasperated, she then asked and he then gave a reason so lame that it was enough to make her wonder if Clark might be Superman. (There have been many versions of this story since.)
Clark is the archetypal nerd, wearing glasses because he really has to -- it’s his secret identity. But how his physiognomy didn’t give him away as son of Krypton is one for the books. This instance of willful ignorance apparently is impossible. Because mental snapshots.
In one telling, while at the office a commotion on the street below draws them to the window -- a necklace robbery was in progress. She suddenly got a feeling she knew what Clark would do next, which was to give a flimsy excuse and disappear, then a minute will pass and Superman should (and will) fly past the window. This quizzical look does not go unnoticed by eagle-eyed Clark as he stages a retreat. Changing into his costume he thinks back to the very first time Lois ever did all of her wondering.
It had happened one morning when he had flown over the Daily Planet, and she had caught a quick glimpse. Lois was rounding a corner and became aware of his landing on the roof of her office building. “… and now he’s dropped out of sight! Good gracious! Maybe he works on the Planet staff, under a secret identity!”
▶
Miss Lonelyhearts Lois Lane №3 - 1958
Lois once went above and beyond her duties as the advice columnist. She had shown up at the eighth floor landing window of the Belvue Apartments, where a despondent man was threatening to jump. Lois climbs out, telling him she too wants to jump, “Er-(gulp!) Do you think you’re the only person in the world w/ a broken heart?” Promptly losing her footing, Lois goes over the edge.
Manages to catch the corner of a election banner hanging below. Before it can tear off she has swung into position to plummet through a number of window awnings. Cushioning her fall until a fireman’s net catches her. This vivid demonstration of falling in love cures the man’s sick heart, so he climbs back in and goes to where Lois is being treated. “You’re wonderful, Miss Lane! The next time I commit suicide, it’s going to be over you!”
▶
School for Scoops Lois Lane №29 - 1961
Through pluck and perserverance Lois becomes the number one female reporter in the United States! The University of Metropolis asks her to give a lecture course. Hearing this news, racketeer Nick Roker sends two gunmen to the campus. Because.
Lois proves a precocious professor and, w/ the help of Jimmy Olsen, stages re-creations of actual cases. Jimmy walks the class through the first scenario.
Drugged by a gang she’s been after, Lois gains consciousness to find that she is bound, gagged, inside a tiny basement. Someone behind is about to put a blindfold on her. At this critical moment, Lois locates the basement’s electric meter and memorizes its serial number.
This bit of information helps break the case and gets her a scoop. Before dismissing the class, she hands out writing assignments.
The next day students are greeted by a gruesome set piece: Having once crossed the line w/ racketeer “Duke” Benson, he has enticed her over to his office and there ties her to a chair, placing a bomb beneath the chair before his exit. Ignoring the lit fuse, she leans forward and nudges the phone off its cradle, picks up a pencil w/ her mouth, and dials 9-1-1, ... in the time it takes for her to grade this second assignment, Lois has deduced that two are not written by journalism students.
Thinking to instruct her class by treating this development as a case study, she outs them only to realize too late they were sent to off her. Lois’s quick thinking distracts them long enough for Jimmy’s signal-watch to summon Superman, who makes a brief cameo at the very end.
▶
Lois’s College Scoops Lois Lane №55 - 1965
(An Untold Tale)
One time, Lois took Jimmy Olsen and Superman to her college reunion. There she grew nostalgic and, picking up a school scrapbook, leafed through to find a clipping of her first scoop for the Raleigh Review.
It was an impossible first assignment: to join an all-male only fencing team and write about the experience. The fencing captain, who was a good sport and willing to go along, gives Lois a week to practise before they were to meet in a bout.
Through diligence and sheer love-of-reporting, she outfences the captain, landing Lois her very first scoop.
Then she puts down her cup of punch and begins to leaf through a second scrapbook, locating a clipping of her first-hand account of discovering a new comet – by fluke, during a night at the Smallville observatory, where she was using the telescope to write a paper for astronomy class.
The last page held a tattered clipping of her strangest scoop. Taking a solo field trip for biology class, Lois had stumbled across – and captured on film – a live pterandon and a living sabre-tooth. Her biology teacher is wowed. “Those prehistoric creatures vanished without a trace, Lois! But thanks to the movies you took, we know exactly how they looked and acted!”
▶
How Clark Kent First Met Lois Lane (Bonus Tale) Adventure Comics №128 - 1948
(An Exclusive Adventure of Superboy)
While still in high school, Clark receives a letter from the Daily Planet: Clark Kent, 713 Main Street. Congratulations! You are one of the two winners of our annual contest to honor the best school newspaper reporters. Your prize is a free-trip to Metropolis, where you will be allowed to work as cub reporter for one week.
Overjoyed and full of bonhomie, Clark shows up and is introduced to Lois Lane, the other winner; he takes an instant shine to her. The editor tries to break this spell by assigning a competition to see who can bring in the best story of the day, with the winner getting a front page byline! Lois suggests a side bet to Clark, “The loser treats the winner to an ice cream sundae?”
“I never bet … but I’ll make an exception in your case!” After handshakes, Lois ventures out and, based on a hunch, stumbles into criminal activity, resulting in being tied up and about to meet her end – Superboy arrives and saves the day.
After he has dispatched her attackers, this unknown being glides over and unties Lois. On an impulse she jumps into his arms and asks to be carried away from the scene, a request the Boy of Tomorrow was fated to grant.
She later on wins the competition (Clark has been busy elsewhere) and, after work, he takes her to a soda fountain and pays his bet. They spend the week chasing stories, then it’s time to wave goodbye to Lois from a train platform, wondering if he’ll ever cross paths w/ her again.
| NOTES
[1]
BASED ON reports from, among others,
Tricia Annis,
Tim Hanley,
Steven Thompson,
and Internet searches.
[2]
BACK COVER AD – The back cover ad for Action Comics №1 was bought by the
Johnson Smith & Company in Detroit, Michigan. They were purveyors of, among other things:
- pocket radios
- midget radios
- midget pocket radios
- magic radios
- crystal radios
- radio & television books
- experiment sets
- wireless transmittals
- telegraph sets
- electric phones
- electric baseballs
- world mikes (a microphone)
- deluxe microphones
- big entertainers (an air mattress)
- Stinson Reliant giant flying planes
- all-metal model airplanes
- wigs (blond only)
- yacht caps
- live chameleons
- x-ray glasses
- booklets on hypnotism, learning to dance, learning to tap dance, ventriloquism, and ju-jitsu
- whoopee cushions
- joy bussers
- rings
- luminous photos
- luminous paints
- movie projectors
- telescopes
- field glasses
- world's smallest candid cameras
- bull dog fish hooks
- and Japanese rose bushes.
OCCUPATION: Staff reporter for the Metropolis Daily Planet. (But, to get a scoop, she’s worked as an actress, acrobat, cook, waitress and baby-sister!) AGE: 23 (But already she’s been around the world in 8 minutes - thanks to Superman!) WEIGHT: 121 (But Superman can carry her w/ one hand!) AMBITION: To become Mrs Superman (But the man of steel has other plans!)
“He He He! Like Eerie, Unearthly Tales? You’ll find them here! ... Do you go for Stunning Surprise Endings? We have those, too! ... Want to read about Ghosts, Witches and Dark Secrets! ... Eh ? What do I know about it? I’M LOIS LANE! And how I got this way is just one of the stories in this collection of shockers ... on sale June 29th!”
[3]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
❙Action Comics
№1 (Jun 1938) Superman, Champion of the Oppressed
|
№2 (Jul 1938) Revolution in San Monte
|
№5 (Oct 1938) The Big Scoop |
№6 (Nov 1938) The Man Who Sold Superman
|
№7 (Dec 1938) Superman Joins the Circus
|
№9 (Feb 1939) $5,000 Reward for Superman
|
№23 (Apr 1940) Empire at War (Part II) |
№27 (Aug 1940) The Brentwood Rehabilitation Home
|
№31 (Dec 1940) The Hand of Morpheus
|
№32 (Jan 1941) The Preston Gambling Racket
|
№35 (Apr 1941) The Worthless Gold Mine
|
№36 (May 1941) Fifth Columnists
|
№37 (Jun 1941) Clark Kent, Police Commissioner
|
№38 (Jul 1941) Hypnosis by Radio
|
№41 (Oct 1941) The Sabotage Ring
|
№44 (Jan 1942) The Caveman Criminal
|
№47 (Apr 1942) Powerstone
|
№57 (Feb 1943) Crime’s Comedy King
|
№68 (Jan 1944) Superman Meets Susie
|
№80 (Jan 1945) Mr Mxyztplk Returns
|
№139 (Dec 1949) Clark Kent, Daredevil
|
№144 (May 1950) Clark Kent’s Career
|
№164 (Jan 1952) Hall of Trophies
|
№169 (May 1964) The Man Who Stole Superman’s Secret Life!
|
№189 (Mar 1954) Clark Kent’s New Mother and Father
|
№254 (Jul 1959) Battle with Bizarro
❙Adventure
№128 (May 1948) How Clark Kent Met Lois Lane
❙Justice League of America
№21 (Aug 1963) Crisis on Earth-One
|
№22 (Sep 1963) Crisis on Earth-Two
❙Showcase| 4 (Oct 1956) Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt
❙The Flash
№123 (Sep 1961) The Flash of Two Worlds
❙Superboy
№10 (Oct 1950) The Girl in Superboy’s Life
|
№31 (Mar 1954) Demon Reporter
|
№41 (Jun 1955) Junior Sleuths of Smallville
|
№47 (Mar 1956) Superboy Meets Superman
❙Superman
№4 (Mar 1940) Superman Versus Luthor
|
№6 (Sep 1940) Lois, Murder Suspect
|
№12 (Sep 1941) Peril on Pogo Island
|
№13 (Nov 1941) The Machinations of the Light
|
№17 (Jul 1942) Man or Superman
|
№19 (Nov 1942) Funny Paper Crimes
|
№19 (Nov 1942) Superman, Cartoon Hero
|
№28 (May 1944) Lois, Girl Reporter
|
№85 (Nov 1953) Clark, Gentleman Journalist
|
№125 (Nov 1958) Clark’s College Days
|
№135 (Feb 1960) When Lois First Suspected Clark Was Superman
|
№165 (Nov 1963) The Sweetheart that Superman Forgot!
|
№ 169 (May 1964) The Man Who Stole Superman’s Secret Life!
❙Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen
№34 (Jan 1959) The Most Fantastic Camera in the World
❙Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
№1 (Mar 1958) Witch of Metropolis
|
№1 (Mar 1958) Bombshell of Metropolis
|
№3 (Jun 1958) The Man Who was Clark’s Double
|
№17 (May 1960) How Lois Got Her Job
|
№29 (Nov 1961) School for Scoops
|
№20 (Nov 1961) The Irresistible Lois Lane
|
№55 (Feb 1965) Lois’s College Scoops
|
№80 (Jan 1968) Splitsville for Lois and Superman
❙World’s Finest
№30 (Sep 1947) Sheriff Clark
|
Mostly intact is the second largest space rock on Earth. The Bendegó meteorite was discovered in 1784 by a boy in Monte Santo, Bahia. ... Watch a 38-min. documentary from 2019 of the retrieval phase; in Brazilian-Portuguese.
Yagan Square honors the fourteen Noongar language peoples of Western Australia. + Repurposed building in William St downtown, detail of original façade with a modern topping. + Plaque for J. Crothers Perth, constructing Western Australia since 1896.
Spanda, a carbon fiber sculpture by Christian de Vietri, can be seen at Elisabeth Quay on the Swan River.
An 1859 model, made for architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, of the spire sitting on the wooden-beamed roof, known to habitués as the ‘forest’.
![Gary Hustwit quote: I saw Helvetica everywhere [in New York City], and watched how people were interacting with - but not really thinking about - it. People going about their lives, letting a typeface tell them which direction their subway train was headed, where they could park, where the bathroom was, how much to pay for a hot dog. I felt like I’d stumbled onto a secret language.](assets/pix/q650-garyhustwit.png "Helvetica: the Documentary")
