Author Archives: mourningdove

Aikido and Rhetoric: The River

Do not failTo learn fromThe pure voice of anEver-flowing mountain streamSplashing over the rocks. Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace You can never step into the same river twice. Heraclitus, fragment 91 Water–flowing water, to be precise–is a key metaphor in the practice of both aikido and rhetoric. Sometimes it exemplifies a kind of “softContinue reading “Aikido and Rhetoric: The River”

Field-Trip Fridays (actually Saturday and Sunday): Spreewald

My friend and colleague here Birgit had a delayed 50th-birthday celebration with a group of friends out in the Spreewald (delayed because she got omicron right before her birthday! She was boosted and thus had a typically mild infection, but of course she was terribly disappointed). The Spreewald is a marshy oak, alder, and birchContinue reading “Field-Trip Fridays (actually Saturday and Sunday): Spreewald”

German Word of the Week: Vokuhila

This one is hilarious, and it’s really more of an abbreviation than a word. It stands for “vorne, kurz; hinten, lang,” which describes a mullet. The funny part is I’ve been wondering for weeks what the German word for mullet was (why, you ask? Who knows? Some combination of discussing hockey with people and beingContinue reading “German Word of the Week: Vokuhila”

Berlin Philharmonic: Stravinsky & Bach (with extra-credit Handel)

Last night I went with a group of friends to hear the Berlin Philharmonic play some ballet pieces by Stravinsky and a Bach concerto for oboe d’amore (Baroque oboe). First of all, the Philharmonic hall is a wonder in and of itself. Designed by Hans Scharoun and built in 1963, the hall was a bitContinue reading “Berlin Philharmonic: Stravinsky & Bach (with extra-credit Handel)”

Living In…Spirited Away

My aesthetic has a definite bimodal distribution. On the one hand, I like really spare, open (but not necessarily minimalist) monochromatic spaces–which you can see in my Seoul Villa post. On the other hand, I’m irresistibly drawn to spaces and objects with a pronounced “more is more” aesthetic–dark, rich, ornate, with a lot of redsContinue reading “Living In…Spirited Away”