Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

This 1705 complex Dutch maze instructs Christians on the possible pathways to New Jerusalem (and dead-ends to be avoided):

In his fifth-century commentary on Ezekiel’s vision of New Jerusalem, Jerome quotes the Aeneid, likening the path of salvation to a minotaur’s maze: “‘As once in lofty Crete the labyrinth is said to have had a route woven of blind walls’ . . . . So I, ente[r] the ocean of those scriptures and, so to speak, the labyrinth of God’s mysteries, of whom it is said ‘He made darkness his covert’ and ‘there are clouds in his circuit’”.

This 1705 maze (Dool-hoff), signed by the Dutch Catholic printer Claes Braau, also comes with clouded pathways, but here the way to New Jerusalem is cobbled by didactic verse. The broadsheet’s four dead-ends are burnished with spiritual gravity by its epigraphs: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14.12) and “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise” (Ephesian 5:15). Each pathway is paved with texts that narrate vocational and moral choices at various lengths. The road dedicated to economic wealth is full of twists and turns, but ultimately leads to the same fate as the short meander through a trench describing vanity: your journey’s abrupt termination. Choosing the “wrong path” forces the puzzler to backtrack, should they want to meet the Lamb of God at the maze’s center. Luckily, there are many ways to reach salvation, such as by studying the seven liberal arts.

The Dool-hoff was published in Haarlem during a period when neighboring Amsterdam was awash with secular mazes. “Doolhof inns”, a type of surreal public house, became increasingly popular in the seventeenth-century, treating tipsy patrons to mechanical statues, uncanny waxworks, and disorienting hedge mazes.
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Scholars are not sure who designed this Dool-hoff. While the text is credited to H. A. Hoejewilt, the name seems to be a bibliographic dead-end (Hoe je wilt means “However you want” in Dutch). Only a few copies survive. While the version above comes courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Jeff Saward offers a detailed description of an earlier specimen, discovered in the recycled backmatter papering a book of Quaker minutes, which can be read and viewed here. And for more religious spiralling, check out our post on Claude Mellan’s 1649 engraving The Sudarium of Saint Veronica.

Dool-Hoff: A Dutch Maze with New Jerusalem at its Centre (1705)


Illustration by Scottish artist Noel Laura Nisbet, for a 1916 edition of "Cossack Fairy Tales", a collection of folk stories from an area known to us today as western Ukraine:

Originally translated by British historian and linguist Robert Nisbet Bain in 1894, this collection of stories hail from an area known to us today as western Ukraine. ⁠In his introduction Bain describes the tales as being translated from “Ruthenian” (an exonymic lingonym for a language that would become Ukrainian) and gathered from three “chief collections” of folklore by Panteleimon Kulish, Ivan Rudchenko, and Mykhailo Drahomanov.

The tales featured include familiar characters and fairy tale tropes, such as a tale of a mysterious sack which grants food, a ram which gives gold, and a drum that summons henchmen who give people a good beating. This last tale can also be found in a version called "The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack" by the brothers Grimm. In "The Story of little Tsar Novishny, the False sister, and the Faitful Beasts" and "The Vampire and St. Michael", the act of not crossing oneself before drinking or bathing in a stream or river leads to being possessed by the Devil, something we should all keep in mind.

This edition from 1916 is adorned with beautiful illustrations from Scottish artist Noel Laura Nisbet (who also illustrated a 1915 collection of Russian folktales, also translated by Bain.

Lincolnshire village is home to one of the world's largest collections of vintage TV & film equipment.


Lincolnshire museum preserves analogue TV technology and techniques



Hemswell Cliff Building Tour (One can spend hours in this VR tour)


FRANTIC, the Roman Polanski film with the nuclear trigger McGuffin opened Feb 26, 1988. Starring Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner, John Mahoney and Betty Buckley (as Ford's kidnapped wife).




Janet Fay Simmons, R&B Mystery Woman, born February 25, 1932, passed away May 17, 2000 in Philadelphia. Simmons first recorded in 1954.  A number of Bomb songs were released (and, in some cases, such as this one, was not released) that took full advantage of the atomic sex motif. And no other female artist gave better voice to the suggestive power of the Bomb than Faye Simmons. The sultry and ridiculous lyrics "Want to hug and kiss you and give you a squeeze. You make me radioactive all in my knees" and the song's distinctive roller rink organ accompaniment is almost enough to justify the expense of the Manhattan Project.

Fay Simmons - You hit me like an atomic bomb


LYRICS:

You hit me baby like an atomic bomb
I surrender honey 'cause you have won
Your lips touched mine and my heart went numb
I need your kind of lovin' won't you give me some

Want to hug and kiss you and give you a squeeze
You make me radioactive all in my knees
You must be the angel that lights the stars
Or maybe your love will come down from Mars

I don't know honey where you come from
But you sure hit me like an atomic bomb
I'll take you in my arms and fly off in space
The way I love you we'll start a super race

With your supersonics we will find a new world
You're my boy and I'm your girl
We'll live and love and have lots of fun
'Cause you hit me baby like an atomic bomb

I don't know honey where you come from
But you sure hit me like an atomic bomb
I'll take you in my arms and fly off in space
The way I love you we'll start a super race

With your supersonics we will find a new world
You're my boy and I'm your girl
We'll live and love and have lots of fun
'Cause you hit me baby like an atomic bomb

"Recorded at the Reco-Art Studios in Philadelphia on August 23, 1954 at 8pm with an unknown band."  Not released until 1991 on a CD compilation "Talk To Me Daddy" by UK label Flyright Records. Too bad. I'm sure it would of been a hit back in the 50s.





Not much is known about Fay Simmons (no publicity photos, that's not her on the above album cover, no obituary) other than that she recorded on a number of Philadelphia-based labels including Grand with Philadelphia's own The Night Riders Orchestra on Whim, Wham Whop (1954). Her discography up till around 1964. More on the mystery singer here.


Ray (Stalin Kicked The Bucket) Anderson (1924-2010) returned to topical recording in this 1958 masterpiece of hillbilly paranoia concerning the second Russian satellite. In the frantically paced song, the singer wonders aloud if Sputnik 2 is "atomic" and then, for no apparent reason, champions the "American hound dog" over the Soviet "mutnik," Laika. If ever there was a song that illustrates the absurdity of the space race, this is it.

West Virginian Ray Anderson & The Home Folks - Sputnik And Mutniks (1958)




Ice cream & cocaine, err, white powder!


Hazmat teams on scene


Cigarette Cards...



(Top) The Old Curiosity Shop
Wills's Cigarettes, Old London, 1929.
#15 "The Old Curiosity Shop" Portsmouth Street.

(second) "Country Seats & Arms" (third series of 50 issued in 1910)
#141 Londesborough Park, Yorkshire - home of The Earl of Londesborough

(third) The New Inn, Pembridge
Wills, Old Inns 2nd series, 1939.
No. 24 The New Inn, Pembridge, Herefordshire

(fourth) Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem
Wills's, Old Inns 2nd series, 1939.
No. 40 Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, Nottingham.