Laugh’n a half
Sunday, 14 October 2007
1. What do you call a grizzly bear with no teeth?
2. Why did the tiger eat the tightrope walker?
Humor from a 6 year old….
1. A gummy bear.
2. He wanted a balanced meal.
Musings
Soffit splendor
Friday, 28 September 2007
Most of the new construction in our neighborhood shows someone (perhaps mostly the planning commission?) has made a serious attempt at fitting in with the architectural style. Love the soffits.
Well, as long as I don’t have to paint/maintain them!
Horselads
Friday, 21 September 2007
Yeah, I know; this is not a horse. But it’s the closest I had….
While browsing tables of contents for issues of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, I ran into this term: horselads.
The term harks back to the days of horse-farming in rural Britain, and to the social hierarchy on rural farms (those Brits!). Horselads were at the bottom, while still valued for their knowledge of work horses, although they were assigned other menial field labor. The horselads received room and board as part of their compensation, in part because the farms were relatively isolated, or at least by keeping horselads resident on the farms their labor was assured.
Horselads could be recognized by their by their distinctive dress at the hiring fairs where they looked for their next position—they moved each year—while striving to move up the hierarchy.
Because of their low status, annually fluid employment situation, and the way written history (even modern history) is generated, little directly from horselads has made it into records. Giles and Giles opted to examine the graffiti in barns where horselads lived and worked to obtain insights into their lives.
Conclusions: horselads wrote about sex and the ladies, they glamorized themselves, they recorded song lyrics, they wrote about hardships (extreme weather, boredom), and they drew pictures (mostly line drawings) on the same subjects (especially the first).
I wondered if the horselads are in the direct social ancestry of North America’s western cowboys, but these British researchers do not address this point.
Beach fire
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Last night after a fine potluck meal (the first maize from the Provider’s garden, the first applesauce from the old orchard—thanks Cousin M), we adjourned to the beach donning sweatshirts (most of us) along the way and pulled up chairs around the first beach fire of the season for me. Finally, the hot weather is abating and we are back to the typical summer UP evenings, when it gets cold enough that you want more than a t-shirt when you sit outdoors after sundown and listen and tell stories and laugh.
Laurel and her friend Rachel sang a cappella for us all. They started with “Me and Bobby McGee”—excellent and very moving! I think Janis would have loved their rendition!
Technical info: JCB just introduced me to MarsEdit for composing my blog texts, so I can avoid directly using WordPress, which had been giving me fits. So far, I’m loving it. Recommended!
Today’s vocabulary:
a fast-moving brownish insect, a type of bristletail, that frequents warm places indoors (thank you Apple Dictionary)
Silence
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
Thomas Perry, “Silence” (2007). Saw it recommended somewhere. It’s another of the interminable detective/mystery titles that I inhale regularly. Time frame is “present.”
First wrong step: main good guy is an ex-cop private detective who apparently isn’t aware that high(er)-end rental vehicles are likely to have GPS units that would allow someone to track his (car’s) whereabouts. The guy’s otherwise quite sharp, so this is annoying.
Second wrong step: main bad guy offs a cop in his cop car on a road near rental car outlets at a mid-sized California airport, without any concern that such events and his own (rental) car’s license* plate may well be visible to surveillance cameras.
Annoying missteps.
And (sigh) this is less than half-way through….
Ten pages later. Oops on me. Second step developed into a plot line as cops checked out that vehicle when its drivers were getting a bite in a highway diner, and, but that’s enough for now!
Still.
* Brit./Can.: licence
Today’s vocabulary:
freemartin
female offspring of placental mammal who was a twin with a male in utero and the male’s hormones affected the female such that she is sterile; most commonly noticed and applied to cattle and sheep.
Eggshell(s)
Thursday, 12 July 2007
These are freshly washed….
It began when Lou Bigelow and Toby Maytree first met. He was back home in Provincetown after the war. Maytree first saw her on a bicycle. A red scarf, white shirt, skin clean as an eggshell, wide eyes and mouth, shorts.*
Sweet image. Except for the clean eggshell idea. I suspect anyone who’s collected chicken eggs doesn’t think of eggshells as clean. Remember where they come from….
Thinking of two close friends today: gallstone surgery for one; first dose of chemo for Kevyn.
* Annie Dillard, “The Maytrees” (2007).
Rain amnion
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
I requested Sheridan Hays’ “The Secret of Lost Things” from the library based on a review (I think this one from the NYT), and I just started it yesterday—finally, it’s due at the end of the week. [I haven’t gotten to the mystery part of the plot yet.]
And it’s a gem. Lyrical writing. Interesting characters, albeit oddball, every one. But maybe that’s just mirroring reality?
The main character, Rosemary, takes to walking the streets of NY in the evenings after work. We don’t know the date, but perhaps in the 1970s or 80s.
One hot July evening, I ran down an empty street as the peppery smell of city rain rose up from where the rain fell, spotting the pavement. The sharp scent set me sneezing. Seconds later huge heavy drops began to pelt my head and back. I took shelter beneath an awning and watched the storm through an amnion of water. Ten minutes later the rain ceased, as abruptly as it had started. The temperature dropped a few degrees, and I felt the materiality of weather, impervious to the great constructed landscape. Manhattan was at once sealed, and as I watched filthy rainwater disappear into subway grates and down street drains, as permeable as anything in nature. [p. 62-63]
Although it may not sound like it, the story does click along. I think I’m recommending it.
What color?
Monday, 25 June 2007
Anthropologists have actually studied color names. Here’s what a couple of researchers concluded:
The application of statistical tests to the color naming data of the WCS has established three points: (i) there are clear cross-linguistic statistical tendencies for named color categories to cluster at certain privileged points in perceptual color space; (ii) these privileged points are similar for the unwritten languages of nonindustrialized communities and the written languages of industrialized societies; and (iii) these privileged points tend to lie near, although not always at, those colors named red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, orange, pink, black, white, and gray in English.
So, what color is this? I say dark fuschia. Or purply pink.And what is it? No-fat Greek yogurt stirred into wild blueberries (slightly microwaved frozen ones), both from TJs.
PS Kevyn was back on the air today.
Rainfall arrives
Monday, 11 June 2007
Or maybe I should say (write): rainfall arrives on little cat feet*….
We got enough rain early this evening to soak in about half an inch where the soil wasn’t hard-packed. It was the first rain here at the house in I don’t know how long. The Guru’s dad had a sprinkle at his house in Buckhead on Friday, but none fell here.
I’m still saving sink water for the plants….
* Thank you, Carl Sandburg.
El colibrí
Sunday, 3 June 2007
Played hooky today and headed for northeast piedmont GA, where the rains came last night (is that why the hummers were so busy?), but had gone by the time we arrived. ATL got nary a drop.
Today’s vocabulary:
levigate
to reduce something to a fine powder or paste