Stuff!
May. 24th, 2025 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo Our version of mudlarking is going to the shop at the recycling centre- much less mucky and the things we come away with are all in one piece.
Yesterday I watched the Northern Mudlarks- mother and daughter operating out of the Scottish borders- picking their way through a Victorian dump that was leaching into whatever river that was. This was in early January, the ground was frozen and items had to be chipped out of the matrix. No, I'm too old for that kind of caper.
We were at the recycling shop earlier in the day and came away with a fine haul.
This little lot (excluding the plant) cost us £6.50
Two big, serviceable vases, a dinky little Italian jug, some coasters (for the Meeting House) and two model buildings- one French, the other Dutch.
I researched the buildings. The French brasserie is probably imagined but the Dutch one represents an actual building on the Market Place in Delft. Both are what you might call collectibles- and if you bought them on eBay they would set you back a tidy sum.....
Yesterday I watched the Northern Mudlarks- mother and daughter operating out of the Scottish borders- picking their way through a Victorian dump that was leaching into whatever river that was. This was in early January, the ground was frozen and items had to be chipped out of the matrix. No, I'm too old for that kind of caper.
We were at the recycling shop earlier in the day and came away with a fine haul.
This little lot (excluding the plant) cost us £6.50
Two big, serviceable vases, a dinky little Italian jug, some coasters (for the Meeting House) and two model buildings- one French, the other Dutch.
I researched the buildings. The French brasserie is probably imagined but the Dutch one represents an actual building on the Market Place in Delft. Both are what you might call collectibles- and if you bought them on eBay they would set you back a tidy sum.....
Gary Zukav
May. 24th, 2025 12:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
quoteoftheday_feed"Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science."
Samuel Johnson
May. 24th, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly."
Adrienne E. Gusoff
May. 24th, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"Things could always be worse; for instance, you could be ugly and work in the Post Office."
George Bernard Shaw
May. 24th, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
Once in a while it's all about a girl in Boston
May. 23rd, 2025 11:53 pmsovayFor the eleventh anniversary of Kittening Day, Hestia was made much of with ham and petting and tomorrow when the day is less frenetic, there will be salmon. Her brother is celebrated in memory, my flower-clawed movie cat.
I will not be attending the reenactment because my plans for tomorrow all involve absolutely not getting out of bed until after noon, but it is true that despite it being the first naval battle of the American Revolution, I had never heard of the Battle of Chelsea Creek. Then again, apparently I have to find out from the internet that I transatlantically pronounce "penalize." An envelope full of lino-printed stickers arrived in the mail fromasakiyume.
I will not be attending the reenactment because my plans for tomorrow all involve absolutely not getting out of bed until after noon, but it is true that despite it being the first naval battle of the American Revolution, I had never heard of the Battle of Chelsea Creek. Then again, apparently I have to find out from the internet that I transatlantically pronounce "penalize." An envelope full of lino-printed stickers arrived in the mail from
asakiyume.
acorn bread and açaí
May. 23rd, 2025 12:00 pmasakiyumeacorn bread
The leftover acorn meal I had in my fridge had gone moldy! Ah well. Fortunately I had acorns left over from last time, so I ground those up, leached them, dried them, and yesterday made a loaf of ... well it's mainly white bread--three cups white flour--but also a cup of acorn meal. So I am going to call it acorn bread, the same way you call a thing banana bread even though it's not mainly bananas.
Behold its majesty!
I still have leftover meal from this batch of acorns, but I will not make the same mistake twice by letting it linger. I intend to make acorn pancakes, or perhaps I'll use it to make some kind of meatballs or fish cakes.
Açaí
Or asaí, as they spell in in Colombia. We in America use the Brazilian (i.e., Portuguese) spelling. In Tikuna it's waira.
Açaí juice (wairachiim) is so beloved in the Amazon. And with reason--it's GREAT. Drink it sweetened, and with fariña, and it's a real pick-me-up:
The Açaí palms are very tall and very skinny. Traditionally, harvesting the berries involves a not-very-heavy person shimmying up the palm with a knife and cutting off the bunches of berries, as in the YouTube short below. (I say traditionally because in some parts of Brazil I think there are now large plantations, and they may have a mechanized way of doing this. But still--I gather--many many people do it the unmechanized way.)
The video specifies Brazil, but it'll be true anywhere that açai grows
My tutor's dad does this. Here's a picture not of her dad but of her boyfriend with a bunch of berries--gives a sense of how big they are:
And the process of making the juice is really labor intensive too. Here's my tutor's mom pounding it. You add water as you go along:
This year the river has really risen high, and in talking about it, my tutor said her dad had been able to go out in canoe and collect the asaí really easily. And I was thinking... wait... you mean the river's risen so high that he's up near the top of the trees? Is that what she's telling me?
I wasn't sure, so I did this picture in MS word (b/c I have no digital drawing tools) and sent it to her and asked, You mean like this?
And she said, "Yes, exactly."
Mind = blown.
The leftover acorn meal I had in my fridge had gone moldy! Ah well. Fortunately I had acorns left over from last time, so I ground those up, leached them, dried them, and yesterday made a loaf of ... well it's mainly white bread--three cups white flour--but also a cup of acorn meal. So I am going to call it acorn bread, the same way you call a thing banana bread even though it's not mainly bananas.
Behold its majesty!
I still have leftover meal from this batch of acorns, but I will not make the same mistake twice by letting it linger. I intend to make acorn pancakes, or perhaps I'll use it to make some kind of meatballs or fish cakes.
Açaí
Or asaí, as they spell in in Colombia. We in America use the Brazilian (i.e., Portuguese) spelling. In Tikuna it's waira.
Açaí juice (wairachiim) is so beloved in the Amazon. And with reason--it's GREAT. Drink it sweetened, and with fariña, and it's a real pick-me-up:
The Açaí palms are very tall and very skinny. Traditionally, harvesting the berries involves a not-very-heavy person shimmying up the palm with a knife and cutting off the bunches of berries, as in the YouTube short below. (I say traditionally because in some parts of Brazil I think there are now large plantations, and they may have a mechanized way of doing this. But still--I gather--many many people do it the unmechanized way.)
My tutor's dad does this. Here's a picture not of her dad but of her boyfriend with a bunch of berries--gives a sense of how big they are:
And the process of making the juice is really labor intensive too. Here's my tutor's mom pounding it. You add water as you go along:
This year the river has really risen high, and in talking about it, my tutor said her dad had been able to go out in canoe and collect the asaí really easily. And I was thinking... wait... you mean the river's risen so high that he's up near the top of the trees? Is that what she's telling me?
I wasn't sure, so I did this picture in MS word (b/c I have no digital drawing tools) and sent it to her and asked, You mean like this?
And she said, "Yes, exactly."
Mind = blown.
Ostrich
May. 23rd, 2025 05:39 amsartoriasIt'a tough to engage with the world and its events when the media largely pursues a bread-and-circuses approach in order to catch attention. I realize that that attitude doesn't come out of nowhere, that human beings do turn to look and linger at a crash site.
But it does no good whatsoever for anyone to feel my heart tearing in pieces over any news coming out of Washington DC, either engendered by the assclowns currently infesting governmental centers, or in the environs (the recent shooting) so my intention to ostrich becomes more vigorous. What's more, the spouse, who usually watches the news every waking moment, even turned off the yatter yesterday.
I try to fill my time with purpose and pleasure that harms no one. Plan things I hope will bring pleasure to others, like: my sister's seventieth is coming up. I took a slew of our old super eight films to a place to get them converted and color corrected, to surprise her with--I hope. One of those super-eights is from 1948, when the parents' generation were all young, all those voices gone now. Most of the films are from the sixties and early seventies, before my parents split; then they start up again in the eighties with my spouse having bought us a camera.
It's going to take time to convert that stuff--the small box I chose will be just under a grand. Phew. But I've been waiting years for the price to come down, and I figure I daren't wait any longer.
In just for me, I'm busy reworking some very early stories. And realizing that ostriching was a defense mechanism that started in when I was very young, coming out in my passion for escape-reading and for storytelling.
The storytelling urge was very nearly a physical reaction,a kind of invisible claw right behind my ribs, partly that urge, and partly a shiver of anticipation. I can remember it very clearly when I was six years old, in first grade. I already knew how to read, but that was the grade in which public schools in LA taught reading, so I got to sit by myself and draw while the others were taught the alphabet and phonics. Writing stories was laborious, and I got frustrated easily if I didn't know how to spell a word, but I learned fast that adults only had about three words' of patience in them before they chased me off with a "Go play!" or, if I was especially mosquito-ish, "Go clean your room!" or "Wash the dishes!" (That started when I turned 7)
But drawing was easy, and I could narrate to myself as I illustrated the main events. So I did that over and over as the other kids struggled thru Dick and Jane. This became habit, and gave me a focus away from the social evolution of cliques--I do recall trying to make myself follow the alpha girl of that year (also teacher's pet, especially the following year) but I found her interests so boring I went back to my own pursuits.
I do remember not liking the times between stories; I was happiest when the images began flowing, but I never really pondered what that urge was. It was just there. I knew that most didn't have it, and for the most part I was content to entertain myself, except when we had to read our efforts aloud in class, there was an intense gratification if, IF, one could truly catch the attention of the others and please them as well as self. I remember fourth grade, the two class storytellers were self and a boy named Craig. His were much funnier than any of my efforts. Mine got wild with fantasy, which teachers frowned on. I tried to write funny and discovered that it was HARD. It seemed to come without effort to Craig.
In junior high, I finally found a tiny coterie of fellow nerds who like writing, and we shared stories back and forth. Waiting for a friend to come back after reading one and give her reactions made the perils of junior high worth enduring. One of those friends died a couple summers ago, and left her notebooks to me. In eighth/ninth grade, she wrote a Mary Sue self-insert about the Beatles. I have it now--it breathes innocence, and the air of the mid sixties. Maybe I ought to type it up and put it up at A03. I think she'd like it to find an audience, even if it's as small an audience as our tiny group back then.
Anyway, a day is a great day if I have a satisfying project to work on...and I don't have to hear a certain name, which is ALWAYS reprehensible. Always. And yet has a following. But...humans do linger to look at the tcrash site.
But it does no good whatsoever for anyone to feel my heart tearing in pieces over any news coming out of Washington DC, either engendered by the assclowns currently infesting governmental centers, or in the environs (the recent shooting) so my intention to ostrich becomes more vigorous. What's more, the spouse, who usually watches the news every waking moment, even turned off the yatter yesterday.
I try to fill my time with purpose and pleasure that harms no one. Plan things I hope will bring pleasure to others, like: my sister's seventieth is coming up. I took a slew of our old super eight films to a place to get them converted and color corrected, to surprise her with--I hope. One of those super-eights is from 1948, when the parents' generation were all young, all those voices gone now. Most of the films are from the sixties and early seventies, before my parents split; then they start up again in the eighties with my spouse having bought us a camera.
It's going to take time to convert that stuff--the small box I chose will be just under a grand. Phew. But I've been waiting years for the price to come down, and I figure I daren't wait any longer.
In just for me, I'm busy reworking some very early stories. And realizing that ostriching was a defense mechanism that started in when I was very young, coming out in my passion for escape-reading and for storytelling.
The storytelling urge was very nearly a physical reaction,a kind of invisible claw right behind my ribs, partly that urge, and partly a shiver of anticipation. I can remember it very clearly when I was six years old, in first grade. I already knew how to read, but that was the grade in which public schools in LA taught reading, so I got to sit by myself and draw while the others were taught the alphabet and phonics. Writing stories was laborious, and I got frustrated easily if I didn't know how to spell a word, but I learned fast that adults only had about three words' of patience in them before they chased me off with a "Go play!" or, if I was especially mosquito-ish, "Go clean your room!" or "Wash the dishes!" (That started when I turned 7)
But drawing was easy, and I could narrate to myself as I illustrated the main events. So I did that over and over as the other kids struggled thru Dick and Jane. This became habit, and gave me a focus away from the social evolution of cliques--I do recall trying to make myself follow the alpha girl of that year (also teacher's pet, especially the following year) but I found her interests so boring I went back to my own pursuits.
I do remember not liking the times between stories; I was happiest when the images began flowing, but I never really pondered what that urge was. It was just there. I knew that most didn't have it, and for the most part I was content to entertain myself, except when we had to read our efforts aloud in class, there was an intense gratification if, IF, one could truly catch the attention of the others and please them as well as self. I remember fourth grade, the two class storytellers were self and a boy named Craig. His were much funnier than any of my efforts. Mine got wild with fantasy, which teachers frowned on. I tried to write funny and discovered that it was HARD. It seemed to come without effort to Craig.
In junior high, I finally found a tiny coterie of fellow nerds who like writing, and we shared stories back and forth. Waiting for a friend to come back after reading one and give her reactions made the perils of junior high worth enduring. One of those friends died a couple summers ago, and left her notebooks to me. In eighth/ninth grade, she wrote a Mary Sue self-insert about the Beatles. I have it now--it breathes innocence, and the air of the mid sixties. Maybe I ought to type it up and put it up at A03. I think she'd like it to find an audience, even if it's as small an audience as our tiny group back then.
Anyway, a day is a great day if I have a satisfying project to work on...and I don't have to hear a certain name, which is ALWAYS reprehensible. Always. And yet has a following. But...humans do linger to look at the tcrash site.
Jack Handey
May. 23rd, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'"
Helen Rowland
May. 23rd, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity."
On Beauty
May. 23rd, 2025 09:02 ampoliphilo Ideals of beauty change. They change from decade to decade. Some of the characteristics our forerunners swooned over look pretty shonky today. Big hair- Louis XIV version or 1980s version? No, sorry, looks kinda silly now....
Consider the pin-ups of the past. Does the Venus de Milo do it for you (even if you can imagine her with arms)? No? Me neither.
Titian's fleshy blondes, Ingres' porcelain beauties, Liz Taylor in the era when she was billed as the world's most beautiful woman? No, not really....
Though I do confess a liking for the pre-Raphaelite stunner (Rossetti's word not mine.) Long tangly hair, big eyes, a studied melancholy. And I still adore the Audrey Hepburn look.
Our friend Mark was saying that today's ideal is one that is only naturally attained by girls around the age of 16- and which fades like the flowers of spring. "Fair daffodils, we weep to see ye pass away so soon...."
Beautiful is not the same as sexy. Barbara Windsor was sexy not beautiful. Beauty, however imperfectly we imagine it, is remote, a little inhuman. Venus is a goddess after all.
Don't touch. Lipstick smears, mascara runs, perfect hairdos get ruffled....
Do you know Merimee's story La Venus d'Ille? That'll learn you to keep your distance from goddesses. It's one of many iterations of the theme.
I am tempted to add that beauty has a spiritual quality, that true beauty is inward not outward, but that would be Quakery of me so I shan't....
Consider the pin-ups of the past. Does the Venus de Milo do it for you (even if you can imagine her with arms)? No? Me neither.
Titian's fleshy blondes, Ingres' porcelain beauties, Liz Taylor in the era when she was billed as the world's most beautiful woman? No, not really....
Though I do confess a liking for the pre-Raphaelite stunner (Rossetti's word not mine.) Long tangly hair, big eyes, a studied melancholy. And I still adore the Audrey Hepburn look.
Our friend Mark was saying that today's ideal is one that is only naturally attained by girls around the age of 16- and which fades like the flowers of spring. "Fair daffodils, we weep to see ye pass away so soon...."
Beautiful is not the same as sexy. Barbara Windsor was sexy not beautiful. Beauty, however imperfectly we imagine it, is remote, a little inhuman. Venus is a goddess after all.
Don't touch. Lipstick smears, mascara runs, perfect hairdos get ruffled....
Do you know Merimee's story La Venus d'Ille? That'll learn you to keep your distance from goddesses. It's one of many iterations of the theme.
I am tempted to add that beauty has a spiritual quality, that true beauty is inward not outward, but that would be Quakery of me so I shan't....
It's a cup trick shell game, it's a puff of smoke
May. 22nd, 2025 09:31 pmsovayI seem to have spent much of this day driving in a nor'easter, when all the potholes overflowed and every other driver in between the streaming gutters drove like a hydroplaning yak. I got to see rushthatspeaks and secured a new inhaler and an appointment with a pulmonologist. Foods of the hour look like pastrami, scones, and a Zagnut.
Last night's shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum is still going around in my head, even if I didn't have people in the Jewish professional community of D.C. I don't want to entertain a referendum on the politics of the victims any more than I want to hear it about detained students or deportees, but it feels too cheap for irony that the shooter targeted an event with a focus on humanitarian aid in Gaza: all that mattered was that it aggregated Jews. The word antisemitism should be like hot iron in the mouth of the man in the White House. What he has to offer, none of us need.
In stark contrast to the mishegos with FB, when Criterion's website refused to honor a gift certificate I had received from them in the last month, I was able to get a real live person on their customer support staff who solved the problem for me so that I could ship a DVD of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) to a relative who really needed it. Maybe I should try to bribe them for editions of my favorite films.
rushthatspeaks and secured a new inhaler and an appointment with a pulmonologist. Foods of the hour look like pastrami, scones, and a Zagnut.Last night's shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum is still going around in my head, even if I didn't have people in the Jewish professional community of D.C. I don't want to entertain a referendum on the politics of the victims any more than I want to hear it about detained students or deportees, but it feels too cheap for irony that the shooter targeted an event with a focus on humanitarian aid in Gaza: all that mattered was that it aggregated Jews. The word antisemitism should be like hot iron in the mouth of the man in the White House. What he has to offer, none of us need.
In stark contrast to the mishegos with FB, when Criterion's website refused to honor a gift certificate I had received from them in the last month, I was able to get a real live person on their customer support staff who solved the problem for me so that I could ship a DVD of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) to a relative who really needed it. Maybe I should try to bribe them for editions of my favorite films.
Miss Piggy
May. 22nd, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
George Wallace
May. 22nd, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?"
Thomas Berger
May. 22nd, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."
John Tudor
May. 22nd, 2025 12:00 amquoteoftheday_feed"A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."
Thwacking People Out Of Love
May. 22nd, 2025 08:57 ampoliphilo Being a Quaker elder turns out to involve more than sitting in the corner looking venerable. It also involves dealing with people who bring untrained puppies into the Meeting for Worship. And doing so firmly but lovingly. It has a lot in common with the office of churchwarden in the dear old, corrupt old, silly old Church of England. Churchwardens it occurs to me, are issued with staves as a symbol of office- and not only as a symbol but also as a defensive or offensive weapon- used to keep order and maintain decency in the sacred building. It is essentially a quarter-staff as used by the outlaw Little John to thwack persons of whom he disapproved....