Catherine > Recent Status Updates

For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience...

A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Go f*** yourself, Ian would shout at them when he was all of eleven years old. He held up two other fingers in response, the ones that would have been chopped off had he been a robber long ago so that he could not use his bow hand. Everyone knew his meaning, I've got mine, whether or not you like it.

Is that really where the gesture came from? Also, this is how rambling and random all the writing is.

"To send for a queer foreigner like this seems very odd to me," said Reggie (Carrington).

"Aha! And tell me, M. Carlile, she was a pretty girl--yes?"
"Really, I didn't notice."
[Poirot persists.]
Carlile cast an agonized glance at his employer. Sir George Carrington gave a sudden chuckle.
"M. Poirot seems determined to make you out a gay dog, Carlile," he remarked.
Mr. Carlile gave him a cold glance.
"Me, I always notice when a girl is pretty," announced Poirot as he descended the stairs.

"Women are the devil," said Carrington with feeling.

"I shouldn't have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills."
"It's not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn't have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room."
"The founder of their religion wasn't so exclusive," said Dr. Macphail with a chuckle.
[His wife:] I've asked you over and over not to joke about religion."

Instant Salads of the Midwest
In the American heartland, the term *salad* adheres to regional vernacular and often has nothing to do with vegetables. These iconic preparations hail from the retro era of processed food, when recipes were passed from friend to neighbor on handwritten cards.
(Descriptions of Watergate Salad, Cookie Salad, Jello Salad, and Glorified Rice follow.)

The citrus collection at the University of California, Riverside is the largest in America, containing more than a thousand different citrus varieties across 22 acres... remarkable given that most modern citrus stems from just three ancient varieties: the Malaysian pomelo, the North Indian citron, and the Chinese mandarin.

A RUM AND COD INITIATION

To become an honorary Newfoundlander (or "Newfie") and be inducted into the Royal Order of the Screechers, you must first introduce yourself and allow the locals to mock you. Next you kiss a cod (salted, frozen, or fresh), eat some bologna...and when asked, "Is ye a Screecher?" answer proudly, "Deed I is, me old cock, and long may your big jib draw!"...then [take] a shot of Screech [rum]...

Feeding Ancestors by Feeding Crows: Shradh * India
"Sometimes, finding a crow can be the hardest part. If there is no crow outside, a relative might caw, trying to call a bird to where they are. If that doesn't work, the family will pack up the banana leaf and go roving for crows...scanning trees and rooftops. When they find a crow, they spread out the banana leaf and invite it to feast."

There was something infinitely seductive in the persona he frequently adopted as narrator, a narrator who both is and is not part of the story, a man of the world with a clear eye and sardonic sense of humor, who in a leisurely manner over a drink and a cigar settles down to confide in the reader something pretty fascinating about the kind of ordinary chap encountered any day of the week in a bar or club.

To Vale:
"Right. Yes. I can see it now. You're absolutely the sort of person who'd pretend to jump off cliffs and then leave your friends worried about it for *years*. I shouldn't have expected any better."

"It's one of those situations where an order of nuns become experts at treating poisons, everyone suspects they are really poisonous, multiple Cardinals die, they have to flee for their lives... Then they save the King's sister from dying and he builds in the secret nunnery. You know how it goes."
"Oh that happens all the time," Kai agreed . . . "Almost as good as universal health care."

People involved with the expedition:
"An English architect, a French Father from Carthage--he does the inscriptions--tablets and things, you know. And then there's Miss Johnson. She's English too--sort of general bottle-washer. And a plump little man who does the photography--he's an American. And the Mercados. Heaven knows what nationality they are--Dagos of some kind! She's quite young--a snaky-looking creature."

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

My friend Heather invited me to talk about books on her library podcast: https://anchor.fm/heather-culley/epis...

[Tycho] Brahe's eccentricities were widely known. He had a dwarf jester named Jepp with supposed psychic abilities who sat under his dining table during meals. For years, Brahe kept a beer-swigging pet elk in his castle. One night the elk drank too much beer, fell down a staircase, and died. It is not known if Jepp predicted this.

"I would not tell them too much," said Holmes. "Women are never to be entirely trusted--not the best of them."
I did not pause to argue over this atrocious sentiment.

Famous Holmes quote: "Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

Next thing out of his mouth: "On the contrary, it would prevent me from taking a second dose of cocaine."

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled Victorian mystery for this Western Romance featuring Mormon pioneers!

O.
M.
G.

Finally made it through "Song of Myself."

...villages in the lower Yangtze became congested hives of small silk factories... spewing out goods at frightening volume...
Yuegang merchants initially exported silk as bolts of fabric. But as they got to know their customers... they acquired samples of Spanish clothing and upholstery and in China made perfect knockoffs of the latest European styles.

It felt unnaturally early, sparrowfart time of day by the feel and sound of it.

From now on, I'm replacing "buttcrack of dawn" with "sparrowfart time of day." Is that a traditional Scottish turn of phrase?

When you truly believe that racial groups are equal, then you also believe that racial disparities must be the result of racial discrimination.

Only recently has it been discovered that sneezes are a much more drenching experience than anyone thought. A team led by Professor Lydia Bourouiba of MIT, as reported by Nature, studied sneezes more closely than anyone had ever chosen to before and found that sneeze droplets can travel up to eight meters and drift in suspension in the air for ten minutes before gently settling into nearby surfaces.

Diabetes is a horrible disease, but once it was even worse because people could do almost nothing about it. Youngsters with diabetes generally died within a year of diagnosis, and it was a miserable death. The only way to reduce sugar levels in the body, and extend lives even slightly, was to keep victims on the edge of starvation.

from Chapter 8, "The Chemistry Department"

If ever there's a time to give this book a third shot, this is it, right?

Having read the Fire (barbecue) and Water (braising) sections at least once each (and no longer eating meat), I'm going to pick up slightly before my bookmark with Air (bread baking).

Frank O'Hara's breezy, conversational tone is pleasant, but doesn't leave me craving more.

Anne Sexton, confessional poet extraordinaire, does, especially Transformations, her collection of fairy tale poems, of which "Rumpelstiltskin" is included in this anthology.