Thursday Things: Tapestry in Motion Edition

3 October 2024. Vol 6 No 40. By Dan McGirt. #269

Oct 03, 2024

Thursday Things is here! This week we make a tapestry dance and place our bets on bears.

The downside of viewing the tapestry online is you miss Bayeux itself. Photo by Veronica Reverse on Unsplash

If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know.

Bayeux Tapestry in motion

My favorite Medieval tapestry is, of course, the Bayeux Tapestry. We’ve discussed it before here at Thursday Things. I have been to Bayeux to see it with my own eyes. It is an impressive work of art and history. It is also a little inconvenient to jet over to France whenever you want to see it again.

Fortunately, the famous tapestry has been painstakingly digitized so that you can view it online:

The Bayeux Tapestry Gets Digitized: View the Medieval Tapestry in High Resolution, Down to the Individual Thread

Commissioned, historians believe, as an apologia for the Norman conquest of England in 1066, this elaborate work of narrative visual art conveys events with a certain slant. But in so doing, the Bayeux’s 75 dramatic, bloody, ribald, and sometimes mysterious episodes also capture how people and things (and even Halley’s Comet) looked in medieval Europe.
It does this in great, if stylized detail, at which you can get a closer look than has ever before been available to the public at the Bayeux Museum’s web site. The museum “worked with teams from the University of Caen Normandie to digitize high-resolution images of the tapestry, which were taken in 2017,” says Medievalists.net.
“A simple interface was created to access the digital version, which allows users to zoom in and explore it in great detail with access to Latin translations in French and English.”

This brings the old tapestry into the 21st century. Now you can study it in minute detail from the comfort of your own home. And you can take your time and zoom in for a closer, lingering look at any detail that strikes your fancy — something not really possible when you’re just one in a line of tourists who need to keep moving through the darkened display room.

But is digitizing the Bayeux Tapestry enough to capture the interest of modern people? Kids today are into TikToks, YouTube, anime — stuff that moves.

Well, now, so does the Bayeux Tapestry — Animated Edition!

Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

While the Bayeux Tapestry may have been inaccessible to most people for however many centuries it has existed, you can now stand before it in its home of Bayeux, or see the very convincing replica at Britain’s Reading Museum. (You’ll note in both cases that the Bayeux tapestry is not, in fact, a tapestry, woven on a loom, but a painstaking, hand-stitched embroidery.) Or, rather than traveling, you can watch the video above, an animated rendition of the tapestry’s story by filmmaker David Newton and sound designer Marc Sylvan.

The animation was first created as a student project by David Newton, with music and sound design by by Mark Sylvan. It depicts the lead up to to the Norman Invasion of Britain in 1066, starting with the appearance of Halley's Comet and ending with the Battle of Hastings. Enjoy!

Battling Bears

It’s Fat Bear Week!

What is Fat Bear Week? Glad you asked:

The answer lies in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, where the big brown bears of the area are gorging on whatever food they can find to fatten up ahead of hibernating through the winter.

For bears, fat equals survival. Each winter, bears enter the den where they will not eat or drink until they emerge in spring. During this time, they may lose up to one-third of their body weight as they rely solely on their fat reserves. Survival depends on eating a year's worth of food in six months.1

To help educate the public and raise awareness about the bears, the National Park Service each week promotes Fat Bear Week by setting up a tournament bracket of local bears on their website:

Fat Bear Week 2024

Vote for the fattest bear of the year! Some of the largest brown bears on Earth make their home at Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Brown bears get fat to survive and Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament celebrating their success in preparation for winter hibernation. Matchups are open for voting October 2 - 8 between 12 - 9 p.m. Eastern (9 a.m. - 6 p.m. Pacific).
This is a single elimination tournament. For each match-up, vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears. The bear with the most votes advances to the next round. Only one will be crowned Fat Bear Week champion. Meet the bears, fill out your bracket, predict your fat bear winner, and campaign for your candidate.

You can vote in each day’s matchup for which bear you think is the fattest. Today’s (October 3) faceoff pits Bear 856 Vs Bear 504 (Park Service needs to work on these names…)

There are also many chances to learn about bears, including bear cams:

In addition to voting during this week-long tournament, there will be a series of online chats on explore.org featuring Mike Fitz, explore.org's resident naturalist, and rangers from Katmai. These chats focus on both the individual bears and Katmai's healthy ecosystem. Throughout the season, you can also tune in to the explore.org bear cams, which offer unprecedented access to the lives of the bears of Brooks River. There are also special live events on a variety of topics hosted weekly throughout the season.

Voting Begins at 9 am Pacific / 12pm Eastern. So depending when you read Thursday Things you may be able to get in on today’s contest. If not, you can get your fat bear fix tomorrow.

At the end, only one bear will be crowned the Fat Bear of 2024!