I resisted for over 5 years, but when I switched from DSL to cable-based internet access a few weeks ago the pricing was such that I succumbed to the serpent-headed lure of 100 channels for my TV. It seems the only thing I’ve missed all these year was the opportunity to buy ab-blasters in three easy installments.
I much prefer the internet–it promotes the active pursuit of useful information. A search on Google for a distinct entity that is known by only a few hundred people in the world still yields entire web pages devoted to it. I had in mind “Sechery”, a minuscule hamlet comprised of 15 houses or so in the backwaters of the Belgian Ardennes, where the Geens family bought an old farmhouse back in 1960. The web has bad art devoted to it, an automated “Sechery, Belgium Page” that includes a helpful map showing Sechery in relation to Greenland and Afghanistan, and it is even at the top of an exclusive list of places in Belgium starting with “Se”. (Be sure to check out the nearby village of Stefan Geens, Belgium… or make your own.)
I did end up learning something. The French and the Germans upheld their proud tradition of fighting on Belgian soil during World War I, and engaged in battle in the area around Sechery, especially in the village of Maissin on Aug 22, 1914. There is a mass grave of a few thousand people near the village today. It turns out the bodies were collected and buried by farmers from Sechery, among others. In the 60’s my parents would come home from walks with rusted WWI helmets they’d found at the edge of fields or in the forests.
[Thu 08:16] francesca (email) Steffie, have you been able to figure out where the artist of the very tasteful Sechery painting was sitting? I think they may be near the turn off to our house and looking down the road going to the river, with the house on the right being Copet?
ffff
[Thu 08:55] Steffie (email) No Francesca, I’m pretty sure it’s the view of Sechery you get when you are coming from Redu, and you turn right at the crest of the hill near the satellite tracking station.
[Mon, Oct 29 2001 – 13:24] Matthew (email) “AVN based WAPF forecast for Stefan Geens. Not valid for navigation.”
How appropriate.
[Tue, Oct 30 2001 – 11:10] francesca (email) Oh yes, I see what you mean- truly a bad painting!
[Sat, Nov 03 2001 – 15:30] Felix (email) What we never realised before, of course, was that Sechery was closely related to various planets in sci-fi books: it seems from the painting, to have at least two, and possibly three, suns. There’s the one clearly visible in the top-left corner: that’s responsible for the shadow cast by the house with all the windows. Then, judging by the shadow cast by the tree nearest us, there’s a sun behind us and to the left as well: that must be the one illuminating the blank wall of the building nearest us. What worries me is the Close Encounters-type glow from behind the hills: is that a third sun, or could it be a UFO? (After all, we’ve already learned that we’re very close to the satellite tracking station.) Finally, is there an un-sun or something just above the painting on the right hand side? It seems to get very dark there.
Of course, I could just be misinterpreting what this chap’s website calls his “caract¿re irrªel et onirique…une irruption, une effervescence fulgurante”. My French ain’t all that good, so anybody care to tell me what that means?
[Mon, Nov 05 2001 – 03:44] uppington (email) “dream-like and unreal character. . . an eruption, a billowing effervescence”.
[Mon, Nov 05 2001 – 11:58] Felix (email) Sounds more like Barbara Cartland than it does like this painting…
In any case, “billowing” is certainly a good word in this context, much better than “fulgurating”, which my Shorter OED defines as “flashing like lightning; (of pain) darting through the body”. Webster’s, on the other hand, helpfully explains that it is “used to describe intense lancinating pains accompanying locomotor ataxy” — which of course gives us the equally unused “lancinating”.
[Tue, Nov 06 2001 – 07:47] uppington (email) oh right. that was me trying to translate it through my french colleague. she didn’t know the word “billowing” but nodded when i suggested it, no doubt hoping i would shut up and stop bothering her. so i thought “fulgurante” was “billowing”. they are all billowy, the piccies, anyway.
[Tue, Nov 06 2001 – 21:46] Stefan (www) (email) So the critic whose words we are pondering here was perhaps being fulguratingly accurate in his description of the painting–it is indeed painful to behold, though not as painful as Monsieur Pol Ledent’s next vanity surf.