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Yesterday I was looking through an old journal and found a series of notes from last fall for Barbelith topics that I never posted. They're incomplete and, maybe, kind of stupid, but I thought it would be interesting to post them here. I'll do one, see if it generates any commentary, then later post another one in this same thread. You are also welcome to bring up stuff you've considered posting about but never did.
10/30/02: Barbentry
A few days ago I made a silly remark about Bridgeport, CT & Brentford, UK being sister cities. It was lame because probably no one around here knows anything about Bridgeport and also because I've never heard of Brentford, but it got me thinking about sister cities. Baltimore is the sister city of New Orleans, which makes sense because they are both sort of blighted, both famous for beautiful weirdness & surprisingly high literary culture, and both retain much of their original architecture. Chicago's sister city is somewhere in Germany, I think, and it probably has something to do with Industry. I can't imagine NYC having a sister city, because it's so big and multifarious, but maybe it does.
But who came up with this sister-city concept, and what exactly does it mean? Who decides what cities are related? And why are they "sisters?" Ships are often considered female for whatever slightly disturbing psycho-sexual reasons, but cities?
And then I wondered if web-communities are like cities. Does Barbelith have a sister-site? |
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