iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

My last post on Verdun is a happy one. Children AND adults were clearly having a great time at the Verdun Lego & Playmobile fair organised by the L’association du passionné du Nord in the old covered market. I enjoyed it too. I loved Lego as a child; & used it & Playmobile all the time in education.

The bar “The Smoking Rabbit” has bitten the dust in Verdun. Verdun looks quite run-down. The poverty rate in the Commune de Verdun (Meuse, France) stands at 22.0% based on official INSEE data, which is notably higher than the national metropolitan average of around 15.4%.

2/2 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori Wilfred Owen

1/2 The mingled bones of 130,000 unknown French & German soldiers who died at Verdun. Ossuaire de Douaumont. 800,000 died in total at Verdun as a result of a strategy of attrition & new military technologies. No land was gained by either side. That’s where extreme patriotism & nationalism gets us.

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4/4 The Duke commissioned many portraits of his all young male musicians from Anton Gabbiani. Portrait of Three Musicians of the Medici Court. Perhaps some of these were his favourites, perhaps even the Black servant. Proximity to the body of the current ruler was key to power in early-modern courts

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1/4 Ingenuity or Amor Victorious) a Baroque allegorical painting by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, 1695–1700; in the Le Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg. Is a viewing through the lens of same-sex desire possible. Crespi was according to his biography, was a married family man. But meaning in

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Best bit in the Strasbourg Zoological Museum was Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) & his son Rudolf’s (1857-1939) glass-made models of marine invertebrates & microscopic soft-bodied sea animals. Strasbourg's Zoological Museum has 63 of the glass models; the only ones in France in a public collection.

Extras in an Upper Rhine workshop Nativity ca.1448. Cow: I tried to get into Grunewald’s big gig; he said I wasn’t mystical enough. Donkey: at least you got a chance, he decided to omit the Asses. This Rhine bloke’s hay is good but no one will ever see us, visitors don’t go in the Schongauer room

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Upper Rhine workshop. Legend of St James: Miracle of the Roast Chicken c. 1490 and Ron Mueck, Still Life, 2010 Conversation(s) Musée Unterlinden Colmar. A judge expressed doubt about St James’s surviving being hanged - but the chicken the judge was to eat, grew feathers & flew out of the window

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Today: Colmar to see the Isenheim Altarpiece by Hagenauer and Grünewald (1512–1516). Always good to see, but the temporary exhibition Conversation(s) was more interesting “a transhistorical journey that places the museum's medieval masterworks in direct dialogue with modern contemporary pieces.

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The lower the designation of train in France, the better the graffiti. Now on TER Fluo Strasbourg to Colmar train and I am welcomed aboard by a Cthulhuesque monster. As the SNCF website puts it “combining regional rail lines, connecting buses, and intermodal soft mobility solutions”

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Lichenology after buying mineral water in a Monoprix in Nancy. Pleurosticta acetabulum. The Catalogue des lichens of the Association Française de Lichénologie says “Corticolous, on deciduous trees ... on trees along roadsides, in orchards, pastures, open woodland. No mention of Minoprix car parks!

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One thing I learned from my architect dad when visiting functionalist European city suburbs in our 70s holidays (what fun we had), is “look up and you’ll see a modernist marvel”. Voilà: a telegraph pole outside the 1950 Marché couvert d'Haussonville; a market that stills sells food! Function & form

Some of Nancy’s Art Deco houses, in the Nancy suburb of Villers-lès-Nancy; a “trou normand” (a palate cleanser in a French meal) - cleansing images of frothy Art Nouveau excess from my visual cortex. My KOSY Appart'Hôtel is located here. The KOSY Appart’Hôtel chain is excellent value for money.

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SNCF toilets provide a view to the underlying structural racist, misogynistic nature of French society. All of the toilets I have used (lots because I’m 64) are staffed by African French women; I haven’t seen a single African French woman in an SNCF ticket office. No different to the UK though

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Probably the sign of a former boucherie chevaline (horse butcher shop). Nancy

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2/2 And a cute cat? Cats have a long tradition in French painting of signifying erotic pleasure e.g Boucher, Les Caresses dangereuses; Jean-Honoré Fragonard Le Chat angora & Manet, Olympia (cropped). Fragonard is a terrible cat painter, but a great satirist of Rococo hedonism and libertine romance.

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1/2 Visited Musée de l'École de Nancy. I like art nouveau buildings but I find the glasswork & other visual crafts, vapid & misogynistic. This painted glass by Bergé is intended as a personification of reading; but his figure is not reading but displaying her breasts for the scopic pleasure of men.

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Art Nouveau applied arts had a keen interest in Umbellifers; perhaps here Hogweed. Musée de l'École de Nancy. But seeing everything as decorative begets a problem. Male artists reduced women from complex humans to sexualized decorative commodities.

When a police force uses tear gas against legitimately protesting teenagers in the Place Stanislas (the most well known of Nancy’s tourist destinations) it is clear that it thinks using force against teenagers is legitimate. France - and much of Europe - is descending into barbarism.

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Maison de Lotissement 24-26 rue Félix Fure, created by architect César Pain. With a high degree of architectural coherence, the street signifies the wealth of the admirers of Art Nouveau. The Ecole de Nancy was not just about natural forms; it was also the cultural capital of an elite class.

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This caught my eye walking the Art Nouveau route. A Commandery (Knights Hospitallers) church, Saint-Jean-du-Vieil-Aître. C12 Romanesque. The tower is all that remains. A symbol of the spiritual & temporal power of Hospitallers in C12. Given rights by Dukes of Lorraine to raise agricultural tithes.

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Now in the fabulous Art Nouveau Excelsior Cafe In Nancy watching teenagers through the window make the police - armed with shields, helmets, guns and tear-gas - run way. De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace, et la patrie est sauvée!"

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Tourism in the centre of Nancy today. Avoiding the tear gas that the police set off at the drop of a hat! Not a legitimate way to deal with protesting teenagers. What a disgustingly oppressive place France is becoming.

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

On holiday for a bit of a rest and get tear gassed in central Nancy! I was following the students on their strike against cuts - good for them - a few let some fire works off & the riot police turned up with shields & tear gas. Massive overreaction. L’esprit de 1968? Possibly. Young people led.

3/3 I knew exactly how to capture this fantasy. It needed the “8mm App” treatment (a Super 8 emulator). A mid 1960s Kodak home movie of a holiday gallery visit is just what Poli, father and son, deserve: a C21 simulacrum of a 1960s viewing of Tuscan Baroque fantasy. Baudrillard: eat your heart out!

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2/2 Gherardo Poli (1674–1739) & his son Giuseppe (1714–1740) were like Tiepolo on acid - capriccists without limits. Their architectural fantasy, Ruins with Bellerophon Striking the Chimera, is a masterpiece of Baroque taste; people turned into Dadd-like fairies in a land of sculptured giants

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1/3 What’s good about French provincial Musées des Beaux-Arts, is they often contain collections of very obscure artists. Nancy holds a major collections of works by Gherardo Poli (1674–1739) & his son Giuseppe Poli (1714–1740). Architectural Fantasy in Ruins with Bellerophon Striking the Chimera.

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Un Nancy Boy en flânant - that’s your actual French, as Julian & Sandy would have said. Because of the demonstrating lycéens, I got completely lost in the suburbs sans bus, so I discovered many top notch non-touristified Art nouveau buildings, like this printers by architect Lucien Weissenburger.

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Still lots of Clouded Yellows, Colias croceus, in Sussex. Saw five at Seaford Head NR @sussexwildlife.bsky.social today. One was a helice form (no photo)

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1/2 You wouldn't expect friable rocks like chalk to be good substrates for saxicolous lichens & yet chalk scree (rubble) on the scarp slopes of the South Downs do have lichens. There's little chalk scree because most scarp slopes are consolidated by vegetation. Very hard to identify sans microscopy

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Still flowering or flowering again on the calcareous grassland of the South Downs. @southdownsnp.bsky.social Fairy Flax, Linum catharticum; Mouse Ear, Cerastium fontanum; Spear Thistle, Cirsium vulagare; and Selfheal, Prunella vulgaris. North-facing scarp of the Devil's Dyke @bsbibotany.bsky.social

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Nothing much! A tiny relict of ancient woodland on the scarp face of the South Downs at the Devil's Dyke just south of Fulking. Too small to get on the Natural England ancient woodland register. Yew, Ash, Beech, Hazel. A tiny scrap of land that has survived 4000 years of wood clearance.

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Its possible to think of Hawthorn as a scubbby nuisance on calcareous grassland, and some seedlings do need removal to stop progression to woodland, but some ancient Hawthorns are magnificent and the main substrate for Teloschistes chrysophthalmus. Devil's Dyke Hill Fort @southdownsnp.bsky.social

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There is a huge agglomoration of Ivy Bee nests in the north east of the Dyke combe on a steep grazing track. Watched them popping in and out of the nest entry holes for ages!

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Chiffchaff in Poynings, West Sussex

A monophagous (only one food type) female Ivy Bee, Colletes hederae, gathering nectar and pollen from Ivy, Hedera helix, for its brood of 10-20 eggs, each in different chambers of this solitary miner bee’s nest.

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A Wall on a wall. A Wall doing what it says on the tin; sunbathing on a vertical wall; the south earth wall of the Devil's Dyke Iron Age hillfort called, in C18, the Poor Man's Walls. Possibly a 3rd brood. Section 41 species. @savebutterflies.bsky.social

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I was at the Devil's Dyke too; and I saw a Wall too! I think they may be having a third brood this year.

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Led 2 intro to lichen workshops yesterday 4 the Lost Woods of the Low Weald Community Get-together, with bags of fallen twigs & handouts listing taxa, growth forms & reproductive structures with photos. Participant: “this foliate one with lecanorine apothecia is not on your sheet” RESULT💯 It wasn’t.

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They are doing very well this year. Here’s a couple of mating balls from Novington Sand Pit, a relict sand quarry, near Plumpton. 1000+ bees!

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Gone over Carlina vulgaris, Carline Thistle. An iconic sights of the South Downs in Autumn & Winter. It stays in its gone over straw-like state for months because its inner bracts resist decay. Just as pretty as when blooming (pic 2) @sussexwildlife.bsky.social Malling Down @bsbibotany.bsky.social

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

False spring? New growth from Centaurium erythraea, Centaury; Clinopodium vulgare, Wild Basil and Reseda lutea, Mignonette on the South Downs at @sussexwildlife.bsky.social Malling Down. Are you seeing this elsewhere @bsbibotany.bsky.social

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Sim Elliott @sim-elliott.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Rather pretty Plant Bug, Lygus pratensis on Toadflax, Linaria vulgaris. @sussexwildlife.bsky.social Malling Down NR.

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It is worth consulting the on-line collection of historic Ordnance Survey maps (held by the National Library of Scotland, but covers all of the UK) when you find something odd. The "odd" landscape between Newhaven & Tide Mills might be partly be explained by it previously being salt pans (salterns)

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British & Irish Wild Flowers & Plants: A Pocket Guide; so good I now have it on kindle too, on my phone. Always have phone so always have guide! My field assistant - Silent Running’s Dewy - is checking the filaments to see if they match the description for Great Mullein. @bsbibotany.bsky.social

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The soil of the westerly part of Tide Mills contains dredged silt from Newhaven Harbour and shingle. This “poor” quality soil has produced abundant Great Mullein, and Sea Kale routed in shingle but growing through a layer of grass growing in humus on shingle. An unusual habit for Sea Kale.

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3/4 Oxford Ragwort “escaped” from the Oxford Botanical Garden, where it had been introduced from Sicily. In the early 20th century it spread along the limestone ballast of railway lines & liked waste places that simulated its volcanic Sicilian habitat. Ruined Tide Mills; a sad Sicily simulacrum.

Rock Samphire on the ruins of the Maritime School for disabled children. The ruined brick and concrete simulate the rock that Rick Samphire grows on, as well as the volcanic habitat of Oxford Ragwort

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