chessandlena.com

Okay, this time it's all my freakin' fault. I drank about a liter of diet coke from 9 to 11 pm. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So here I am, awake at 4:30.

So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Practice forging Ernest Borgnine's autograph Look up weird shit on Wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: the Hanseatic League.

The Hanseatic League was an alliance of cities and guilds along the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas, toward the end of the Middle Ages. You can read "alliance" as "monopoly" and you're about as correct either way. One of the most intriguing aspects of the League is its structure. While rather fluid in terms of its membership, it managed to control and protect trade routes for decades, even centuries.

It's also intriguing as a model of trade, and because of its rise and fall, and, as ever, because I've been to some of these places. And the name still hearkens to past glory in Estonia; Hansabank (now DBA as Swedbank... ugh) is a large regional bank in the Baltic founded as the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90's, and I've seen others (though I can't bloody well remember them right now).

A final thought on the League is that it, like most or all such ventures, is ephemeral. Eventually, people get pissed at a monopoly... eventually, some other way comes about. Interesting things to consider for American economic hegemony and our tenuous financial situation these days. A little scary, too. After all, as a middle-aged white man, no one fears change more than I.

A day or so ago, we learned that a dear friend, Brigitte Lundblade, had died. She was a woman of singular devotion and unparalleled friendliness. She was a kindly woman who was rock-solid in her faith, the mother of the Estonian Baha'i community.

When last I spoke with her, she was bent with age, but very much sharp of mind, strong of will, and joyful of spirit. It had been more than a year, though, and we had no idea about her diagnosis of cancer, or that for whatever reasons, there just wasn't anything anybody could do about it.

The thing is, with certain people, you have this feeling that they're going to always be there. Brigitte was the most amazing example of that: here's this tiny little old lady, chuckling over tea and cookies, offering up the easiest and most personal kind of friendship, hospitality, and wisdom... after enough visits with her, you just feel that she's a light that will shine forever.

We will miss her terribly.

Goodbye, Brigitte.

[I swiped this picture from bahaijournal.org.uk. Hopefully they won't mind.]