Category: Flashes

Everyday images

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For some other reason I happened to open Jane Jacobs 1961 work ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’.
Leaving through the Contents overview my eye fell on the heading ‘Illustrations’. Of which the book actually contains none at all.

Underneath the heading it reads

The scenes that illustrate this book are all about us. For illustrations, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well listen, linger, and think about what you see.

What an awesome call to action. In my work we often try to encourage our clients to go outside, or it is our actual work to bring them outside.
Go out, look around, experience what happens around you. Hear it, see it, smell it, touch it. Sense it.
Watch the stories unfold around you, be part of the complexity they represent.

As a necessary element of thinking. As the much needed phenomenological stimulant for thinking, having the world or other subject matter in front of your eyes.


The quoted phrase seen in the Contents section of the book

Last Saturday Y and I went to the Drukkunst fair, where printers of all stripes and from across Europe presented themselves. We chatted with Roy Scholten and his colleague about the upcoming book on the Hilversum Method, and their crowdfunding action to make it happen (which I since supported). The book will be printed in two separate versions, Dutch and English, so get one if you’re interested!

Y proceeded to make her own print using a A5 sized lino press.


Y’s print inspired by the autumn weather outside

Showing her work back home led to E suggesting we might make our own cards for Christmas. And that in turn meant we needed to get our own little lino-press. So we did.

Today our turquoise Woodzilla was delivered.


the Woodzilla lino press

Finally got around to having the three prints of Dutch common birds by Roy Scholten nicely framed.

LTR: the Common Linnet, Starling, and Kingfisher.

E chose the Common Linnet, the Starling was my choice, and then the last bird in the series of 50 birds that Roy Scholten made turned out to be the Kingfisher, which lives in our neighbourhood so we had to add that one too obviously.

Shoutout to Baspartout for their always beautiful framing work.

Originally I wanted the starling in my home office, but now we see them framed we think we should display them together.

UPDATE: which is what we did. Group them together on a living room wall.

The Starling once more. I love how starlings look black at first glance, but have myriads of color as soon a ray of sunlight shines on them. I think Roy Scholten captured that effect well with the coloring in this print.

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Traveling by car through the EU Schengen area is easy enough w.r.t. borders, you just drive through. But over the years new elements to take into account have emerged. Various countries introduced road tolls, to be paid by buying a window badge, and others have introduced badges for emissions (which allows you into city centers or not). Some badges you buy for the car and remain valid, others are time limited.

This summer we had a ‘4 badge journey’, visiting first France, then Switzerland, Austria and finally Germany. As we drive a different car since May we had to get all badges again.
The four badges are two for emission limits in cities, one for France (purple), one for Germany (green), and two for road tolls, one for Switzerland (orange) and one for Austria (green).

Two window badges for environmental zones, French and German
The French and German environmental zone badges.

Two window badges for road tolls, Swiss and Austrian.
Road toll badges for Switzerland and Austria.

E and I wondered how many badges you’d end up with if you drove your car to all Schengen states? Would you still be able to look through the windshield? When will Member States get around to aligning emission badges, so we have one for, in our case, both France and Germany?

At least the Austrian one can be removed as it’s no longer valid. The Swiss one will be replaced in the new year.