The poor little ones aren't good at skating. ;) www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwWc...

13. XII. 19:55

(Ephemera) Saint Nicholas (AKA Santa 'Claus) on a postcard from the early 20th century. In Slovenia, the traditional gifts were oranges and carob pods... unless you had been bad, in which case you got a hazel twig (I hear they are good for spanking).

Blue tree rings and the Black Death www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

Plus ça change... "It is the month of December, and yet the city is at this very moment in a sweat. Licence is given to the general merrymaking. Everything resounds with mighty preparations ... Once December was a month; now it is a year." Seneca, writing cca 63. en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_l...

Rabbit rabbit rabbit 🐰 🐰 🐰

This town is a joke. Turning whole formerly green neighbourhoods into concrete ghettos, felling trees wholesale... but come December: "Here, have some tinsel, lest you forget in what a pretty, happy asylum you live." (Just as well that birds are leaving. Imagine sleeping in that tree.)

(Ephemera) Remembering my g-g-uncle Ernest Th. (1894 - 1922), who began his life as a starry-eyed child and a precocious little poet, and then died in a railway accident (?) #OTD in 1922, aged 28.

But wait, there's more! OFFER VALID 365 DAYS A YEAR.

No crows were heard or seen today - not one, anywhere. Then, as I was walking home, I thought: "Poor crows... who knows where they are". A second later, there was a distant caw - and another second later, some 30 crows appeared from nowhere, gliding above me against the sunset. ;) ✨

20. XI. 2025, 14:33 🙂 #UrbanBirds #SparrowsRule

✨☄️ 💙💜

14. XI. 2025, 16:44 Behind all the noise of traffic congestion, above the drone of thousands of cars and people, there was a blackbird singing its sweet sunset song. Barely audible - and yet, once heard, it filled everything.

10. XI. 2025, 16:29:32

10. XI. 2025, 16:29:25

10. XI. 2025, 16:29:12

6. XI. 2025, 16:47 Accident.

6. XI. 2025, 15:05

6. XI. 2025, 15:00 Act I, scene 2 The entrées are eaten "Yay, she's gone! Let's eat!" #SparrowsRule

6. XI. 2025, 14:59 Act I, scene 1 The entrées are served (on the branches, as desired) "OK... how long is she going to just stand there...? Is she expecting a tip, or... what?" #SparrowsRule

3. XI. 2025, 17:10 and 17:18. A gorgeous sunset in a town that isn't mine anymore.

3. XI. 2025, 16:23 The watch.

I shouldn't need to enter -AI after every search string (or use extensions) to avoid that parody of even the worst AI that is AI Overview. I am ditching Chrome for good.

2. XI. 2025, 21:16 Confetti.

All Souls' Day 2. XI. 2025, 20:45

All Souls' Day, 2025 The remains of the old cemetery (Navje).

2. XI. 2022, 17:21 A 120-year-old pear tree - a boundary marker - still standing guard at the boundaries of ancient fields, of centuries, of night and day.

A blast of the bluest blue. Yves Klein, "California", 1961. Sold for 18,375,000 euros on October 23. www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...

Thinking of changing my username to Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänswitwe... 🤳

Is it just me, or this song sounds like a psalm? (IMO, it's unfortunate they added the last verse, especially knowing its origin. Apparently, Simon did not like it - and rightly so: it weakens the song.) youtu.be/4G-YQA_bsOU?...

A sad, sad story. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oc...

27. X. 2025, 15:44 Sparrows - and a crow - observing brunch being served.

23. X. 2025, 16:25

A classic, always worth rereading. www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...

Think about the mentality underlying this syntax...

🎤 Blue alert 🎶 💙 youtu.be/cYeeCBFdMsg?...

Outside that studio, it was August 3, 1957. Inside... timelessness. ✨ youtu.be/DevYwINmCC0?...

Grated fresh horseradish elevates any green salad (unless you dislike its sharpness, obviously). Just so you know. 🙂

This is possibly the oldest film ever made: three seconds of the light that bore the date October 14, 1888. It was filmed in Leeds, by Louis Le Prince (see the post below). www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAiY...

Vienna, 4. X. 2015, 18:00 The last goodbye after a long summer. It was going to last forever. Now, it is ten years later.

Read it. It matters. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/t...

2. X. 2025, 19:50

2. X. 2025, 17:12 The eternal ones.

2. X. 2025, 16:48

Happy #TranslatorDay to every translator (and reader). The world would be a very different place without you, to the point of being unrecognisable. N.B. It is telling that the useless UN has called it the Int'l TRANSLATION day - celebrating a process that somehow magically happens on its own. 🙄

I've just learned that philosopher and theologian Tatiana M. Goricheva died yesterday. An extraordinary woman, an extraordinary mind and heart. ✨

A most happy birthday to Robert Kelly, one of the top five living American poets (I STILL don't remember who the other four are). It's not a good day for photographing dragons, but he might like the sound of this, recorded expressly for him on 11. IX. 2015, in Vienna. :) @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social

Two months - days of scorching heat, apocalyptic storms, and the relentless erosion of time - later: badly battered, but still alive.