LaMAQA

36….ThirtySIX

“The place where gods come and go” or the ‘ iikaah (ee-EE-kah) for the Navajo people is a meticulously constructed design drawn out on the ground by releasing handfuls of colored sand. Usually lasting no longer than 12 hours, it is considered to be a gateway for spirits. From this place they affect change inContinue reading “36….ThirtySIX”

35….ThirtyFIVE

If you lay bloodied on a Saxon battlefield it would be for a Valkyrie that you scanned the sky. From astride powerful horses (or swans in some cases) the Valkyrie decided which dying warriors they would guide to join Odin in the hall of heroes, only these honorable men would fight alongside the gods inContinue reading “35….ThirtyFIVE”

34….ThirtyFOUR

William Tell, a legendary Swiss patriot, is also accredited with being one of the first inspirations for the Impalement Arts. Performers around the world, fill the audience with adrenaline as they throw daggers or shoot arrows at restrained assistants. “The William Tell” is a set of tricks derived from the folk tales told about the man.Continue reading “34….ThirtyFOUR”

33…ThirtyTHREE

Little Red Riding hood was a cannibal in some of the earlier versions of the tale, unknowingly eating the flesh and blood of her own grandmother prepared for her by the wolf disguised. Many of these earlier versions put heavy metaphors to work addressing the dangerous of sex, nature, youth and a myriad of otherContinue reading “33…ThirtyTHREE”

32…..ThirtyTWO

Upon his return from the Holy Land in 1278, the abbot of a small church 100km outside of Prague walked around his cemetery carefully spreading a precious handful of dirt. The abbot had been to Golgotha, before leaving he filled his pocket with earth and returned to forever join his dead with the very place Jesus wasContinue reading “32…..ThirtyTWO”

31…. ThirtyONE

It wasn’t until the 19th century that the word Bohemian was used as a socio-cultural identifier. Before the 1800’s the anti-establishment, somewhat unpredictable, artistic astronauts of the norm were sometimes called “gypsies”. Perhaps a result of the potent impression on the aristocratic imagination left by the Romani people, which originally immigrated into Eastern and Central Europe from the Indian Sub-continentContinue reading “31…. ThirtyONE”

30….Thirty

The collapse of the Dutch tulip market in February 1637 has become a metaphor used extensively by economists ever since to describe financial bubbles, when asset prices diverge from intrinsic value to such an extent that the entire system disintegrates. At the speculative apex of “Tulip Mania” a single Augustus Semper tulip bulb was traded at tenContinue reading “30….Thirty”

29 … TwentyNINE

“Nearly two per cent of the population of Northern Ireland have been killed or injured though political violence […] If the equivalent ratio of victims to population had been produced in Great Britain in the same period some 100 000 people would have died, and if a similar level of political violence had taken place,Continue reading “29 … TwentyNINE”

28…. TwentyEIGHT

It is estimated that by the year 2100 50-90% of the world’s current languages will be considered “extinct”- no longer being spoken by a single human being. Currently there are between 6000-7000 languages in use across the planet today. This number seems immense until considering that many of these languages are spoken by less thanContinue reading “28…. TwentyEIGHT”

27 ….. TwentySEVEN

The Burren in Western Ireland is covered by an expansive, eroding limestone carpet. The limestone, formed by compressed sediment 350 million years old, was once the bottom of a tropical sea. A fact that is very difficult to easily comprehend when one looks out across the empty horizon filled only by wind. Incredibly scientistsContinue reading “27 ….. TwentySEVEN”