"Czechs agog as national archive prepares to open mysterious envelope sealed for 20 years."

CNN reports.

Today is the day!

What were the last words of the country’s revered first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk?...

The final thoughts of the statesman, who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since, according to Czech public radio, which has set up a special section of its website to cover the opening of the envelope on Friday. 

"Readers of Michael Pollan or Amanda Little understand that it’s morally indefensible to purchase Chilean blueberries or, God forbid, New Zealand lamb."

"But even a humble loaf of sourdough requires the equivalent of about 5.5 tablespoons of diesel fuel, and a supermarket tomato, which Smil describes as no more than 'an appealingly shaped container of water'... is the product of about six tablespoons of diesel. 'How many vegans enjoying the salad,' he writes, 'are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree?'... One must further account for the more than three billion people in the developing world who will need to double or triple their food production to approach a dignified standard of living. Then add the additional two billion who will soon join us. 'For the foreseeable future,' writes Smil, 'we cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuels.' He performs similar calculations for the world’s production of energy, cement, ammonia, steel and plastic, always reaching the same result: 'A mass-scale, rapid retreat from the current state is impossible.' Smil’s impartial scientist persona slips with each sneer at the 'proponents of a new green world' or 'those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point.'... He finds a worthy target in the inane rhetorical battle, waged by climate activists (and echoed by climate journalists), between blithe optimism and apocalyptic pessimism.... Smil’s book is at its essence a plea for agnosticism, and, believe it or not, humility...."

From "Everything You Thought You Knew, and Why You’re Wrong" by Nathaniel Rich (NYT), reviewing "How the World Really Works/The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going" by Vaclav Smil.

The highest rated comment over there quotes something Smil said in an interview last month:

"The Czech Republic’s Guardian of the Flooded Village pine is this year’s winner of the prestigious European Tree of the Year award..."

"... with Croatia’s Ginkgo from Daruvar securing the second and Russia’s Lonely Poplar the third place" (The Guardian).

Photographs and stories of some wonderful trees.

Good for the soul.

These trees will help you, maybe a bit like the Guardian of the Flooded Village protected Chudobín, during the construction of the Vír dam when, they say, a devil sat under it at night, playing the violin.

We have some guardian trees in our neighborhood. I've been writing from a second-story sunroom overlooking the street, and through the trees I have seen neighbors walking border collies and young boys on roller skates. I have yet to see the devil or even anyone playing a violin, but there was a carpenter within earshot, singing in a beautiful voice.

"Eugen Kukla could not have made his feelings clearer as 120 drunken tourists thronged noisily past his home around midnight, rudely breaking the silence of a normally sedate city-centre residential street."

"'Fuck pub crawls, fuck pub crawls,' he repeated over and over again, while filming the scene on his smart phone. Some of the crowd reacted in amusement, smiling and waving into the camera. But Kukla, 55, a photojournalist, did not see the joke. 'It’s an expression of my personal feelings, a buildup of frustration over a long period of time, years and years and years,' he said.... [A] rising tide of visitors has flooded in, up from 2.62 million in the year 2000, to just under 8 million last year.... The trend is transforming Prague and risks pushing out long-term inhabitants of the city centre – historically considered a residential district – and turning it into a tourist-only zone.... The signs of such tourist-driven commercialisation are everywhere, seen in the spread of cheap souvenir shops, massage parlours painted in out-of-place garish colours – an example of what officials denounce as 'visual smog' – and the dancers in giant panda suits that proliferate in Old Town Square.... Also notorious are walking tours in Malá Strana, near Prague castle, which often culminate in visits to the Lennon Wall, a famous protest site during communist times that has since become a place of free expression for would-be graffiti artists, but is now being defaced with mindless spraying done at the urging of guides.... Tourists were pictured clambering on to outsize statues of babies designed by the Czech artist David Černý in Kampa Park and pouring beer into the mouths of two male figurines in the courtyard of the Franz Kafka museum...."

From "The fall of Prague: ‘Drunk tourists are acting like they’ve conquered our city’/As the Czech Republic capital launches a crackdown, the Observer joins one of the organised pub crawls that are blighting residents’ lives" (The Guardian).

A country needs a short name, a nickname, a pet name.

"France" is to The French Republic, so "Czechia" will be to The Czech Republic.

"The Kingdom of Bohemia was, as the only kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, a significant regional power during the Middle Ages...."

"In 1212, King Přemysl Ottokar I... extracted the Golden Bull of Sicily (a formal edict) from the emperor, [declaring] that the Czech king would be exempt from all future obligations to the Holy Roman Empire except for participation in imperial councils..." 

King Přemysl Ottokar II earned the nickname "Iron and Golden King" because of his military power and wealth. He acquired Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, thus spreading the Bohemian territory to the Adriatic Sea. He met his death at the Battle on the Marchfeld in 1278 in a war with his rival, King Rudolph I of Germany. Ottokar's son Wenceslaus II acquired the Polish crown in 1300 for himself and the Hungarian crown for his son. He built a great empire stretching from the Danube river to the Baltic Sea. In 1306, the last king of Přemyslid line was murdered in mysterious circumstances in Olomouc while he was resting.

In the place that is now called the Czech Republic, today's "History of" country.

Computerized projections on the 600-year-old Astronomical Clock on Old Town Square in Prague

Video mapping incorporates the structure of the tower itself into the images (which evoke the history of the years of the clock's existence). It's nearly 10 minutes long — and worth it.

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

The Czech version of Althouse + Meade.

In the email:

Dear Ann,

I am sure you must have received tons of emails recently, after your blogger love story was published in the New York Times last week. I read the text, too and I could not help but smile.

Me and my boyfriend met on a blog, too. We both blogged for one of the Czech dailies and one day, an admiring comment appeared below one of my texts. I knew who the author was - a co-blogger. He kept returning and leaving more and more comments. I thought at first he was just kidding me – so exaggerated it seemed to me at first...To make the story short: we started sending private messages to each other and chatting on ICQ. We found out we had many things in common and I thought I found my (male) alter ego. We decided to meet in the end, which was not that easy as each of us lives in a different part of the country, about 3.5 hours on the train away. We have been together since. :-)

We decided to publish our love story on the blog about a month after our first date and just like in your and Meade’s case, we received a lot of supportive and surprised comments – our readers suspected something (my boyfriend left lots of hints in his blogs) but could not make the link between us. It was fun to observe....

I think it is rather funny that your story was published on 3 April - that is exactly 11 months after me and my boyfriend met in person for the first time. Although we have not announced anything officially, I’ve received a ring from him and plan to move to the city where he lives in autumn.

I would like to wish you and Meade a lot of luck and happiness.

Best regards,
Anna Leskova, Czech Republic

http://leskova.blog.idnes.cz
http://dulique.blogspot.com

(unfortunately, my both blogs are in Czech...)

It's my dear hope that endless numbers of bloggers and commenters will read and write their way to love.

Don't forget the key step: email. You can love the blogger/commenter to the depth of your heart, but at some point, you need to show up in person and see if the physical presence aligns with what you think you love. To make that happen send email.

"Having his testicles removed, he said, was like draining the gasoline from a car hard-wired to crash."

"A large, dough-faced man, he is sterile and has forsaken marriage, romantic relationships and sex, he said. His life revolves around a Catholic charity, where he is a gardener."

Castration for rapists. Offered in to some criminals in the Czech Republic and condemned by the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee as "invasive, irreversible and mutilating."