0355 – Pupendo (2003)

spacetime coordinates:  Czechoslovakia during the 1980s

Pupendo is a 2003 Czech comedy / drama film directed by Jan Hřebejk. A bittersweet comedy set just prior to 1984, during the era of ‘practical socialism’. For political reasons, Bedrich Mára (Bolek Polívka) has had to give up teaching at Prague’s Academy of Art. He is not allowed to exhibit and has been pushed to the sidelines of interest and lucrative commissions. He and his ceramicist wife (Eva Holubová) and two sons live in a small apartment on the outskirts of Prague.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357058/

0354 – Thelma (2017)

spacetime coordinates:  2010’s Norway

Thelma is a Norwegian supernatural thriller film directed by Joachim Trier and starring Eili Harboe.

Thelma, a Norwegian student with a religious background,  moves to Oslo, where she falls in love with another girl, and soon discovers that her feelings trigger inexplicable powers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6304046/

348 – Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

“attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens.”

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Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. “Gathering Moss” is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.

In this series of linked personal essays, Robin Kimmerer leads general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings. Kimmerer explains the biology of mosses clearly and artfully, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.

Drawing on her experiences as a scientist, a mother, and a Native American, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/87040.Gathering_Moss

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“the tiny pool of water held in a spoon-shaped leaf is the perfect resting place for a waterbear, as plump and gelatinous as a candy gummy bear. the moisture in a moss mat is as vital to the moss as it is to the waterbear. but, since mosses are non-vascular, their water content fluctuates with the amount of water in the environment. the moss leaves shrivel and contort as water evaporates, leaving them crisp and dry. the waterbears too, simply shrink when desiccated to as little as one-eight of their size forming barrel- shaped miniatures of themselves called tuns. metabolism is reduced to near zero and the tun can survive in this state for years. the tuns blow around in the dry winds like specks of dust, landing on new clumps of moss and dispersing farther than their short waterbear legs could ever carry them.”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body 

Timeline –  Bog Bodies on youtube

4000 Year Old Cold Case – The Body in the Bog 

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Carved idol from the Urals shatters expert views on birth of ritual art – “Only the freak conditions of the peat bog of Yekaterinburg permitted the idol’s survival.” read more

The oldest wooden statue in the world -4-must credit Ekaterina Osintseva-The Siberian Times,queries Will Stewart 007 985 998 94 00.jpg

0347 – mother! (2017)

Mother! (stylized as mother!) is a 2017 American psychological horror film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer.  Lawrence said that the film is an allegory: “It depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth … I represent Mother Earth; Javier, whose character is a poet, represents a form of God, a creator; Michelle Pfeiffer is an Eve to Ed Harris’s Adam, there’s Cain and Abel and the setting sometimes resembles the Garden of Eden.

The film uses a dream-logic narrative, of which Aronofsky has noted, “if you try to unscrew it, it kind of falls apart,” and that “it’s a psychological freak-out. You shouldn’t over-explain it.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109784/

343 – The Handmaid’s Tale (TV Series 2017– )

spacetime coordinates:  near future. Gilead (former United States)

(DISTURBING CONTENT)

The Handmaid’s Tale is an American television series created by Bruce Miller based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5834204/

342

“Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.”

― Margaret Atwood

0341 – Coherence (2013)

Coherence is an American science fiction thriller film directed by James Ward Byrkit in his directorial debut.

Byrkit came up with the idea for Coherence after deciding that he wanted to test the idea of shooting a film “without a crew and without a script”. He chose to shoot in his own home and developed the film’s science fiction aspect out of necessity, as he wanted to “make a living room feel bigger than just a living room”. While Byrkit did have a specific idea for how the film would unfold, he selected improvisational actors and gave them the basic outline of their characters, motivations, and major plot points. 

Byrkit told an interviewer, “For about a year, all I did was make charts and maps and drew diagrams of houses, arrows pointing where everyone was going, trying to keep track of different iterations. Months and months of tracking fractured realities, looking up what actual scientists believe about the nature of reality — Schrödinger’s cat and all that. It was research, but despite all the graphs and charts, I think our whole idea was that it has to be character-based. We want the logic of our internal rules to be sound, and we wanted it to be something people could watch 12 times and still discover a new layer.” (read more)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2866360/