Plumerian Obsequies. Frangipani, Plumeria alba, Kerandangan, Lombok, Indonesia
Dark and Wet Monsoon. And the Frangipani along the Kerandangan road thrust themselves upon my mind and senses. They're beloved flowers for funerals here and planted often near or in cemeteries. That custom can only be around half a millennium old because Plumerias hail originally from South America. They were introduced to these parts probably by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/4405497843/in/photolis...).
Today I mourn. Far away in Groningen his friends will be saying their requiescats to Fokke Akkerman (1930-2017), and I do the same here on Lombok. Fokke was a foremost philologist and an international authority on the great northern humanist Rudolf Agricola (1443-1485), sometime master of Desiderius Erasmus (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/8030053741/in/photolis...), and the philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632-1677). More than this, he was a fine literary scholar, and most of all a true friend.
Not a great traveler he nonetheless had a lively interest in strange climes and it was always a joy to send him postcards.
His last name translates to 'Agricola' in Latin. That's appropriate not only for their shared Republic of Learning, but also because a central concern in Agricola's thought was to pay attention to the things themselves: precise philology and a high regard for what meets the eye in nature, in geography and in humankind.
Plumerian Obsequies. Frangipani, Plumeria alba, Kerandangan, Lombok, Indonesia
Dark and Wet Monsoon. And the Frangipani along the Kerandangan road thrust themselves upon my mind and senses. They're beloved flowers for funerals here and planted often near or in cemeteries. That custom can only be around half a millennium old because Plumerias hail originally from South America. They were introduced to these parts probably by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/4405497843/in/photolis...).
Today I mourn. Far away in Groningen his friends will be saying their requiescats to Fokke Akkerman (1930-2017), and I do the same here on Lombok. Fokke was a foremost philologist and an international authority on the great northern humanist Rudolf Agricola (1443-1485), sometime master of Desiderius Erasmus (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/8030053741/in/photolis...), and the philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632-1677). More than this, he was a fine literary scholar, and most of all a true friend.
Not a great traveler he nonetheless had a lively interest in strange climes and it was always a joy to send him postcards.
His last name translates to 'Agricola' in Latin. That's appropriate not only for their shared Republic of Learning, but also because a central concern in Agricola's thought was to pay attention to the things themselves: precise philology and a high regard for what meets the eye in nature, in geography and in humankind.