All Purls. No Swine.
Squeaking in under the deadline which--I suppose--will occur in two days, and after which--I suppose--it won't be National Apple Month anymore. My favorite apple at the moment (things can change) is the Crimson Crisp. It's absolutely delicious for eating, and it apparently grows well here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, where it's a star at my local apple… Continue reading It’s National Apple Month!
‘For,’ said he, ‘as flourishing a Condition as we may appear to be in to Foreigners, we labour under two mighty Evils: a violent Faction at home, and the Danger of an Invasion, by a most potent Enemy, from abroad. As to the first, you are to understand, that for about seventy Moons past there have been two struggling Parties… Continue reading Swift and Sure. The more things change, the more they stay the same: Jonathan Swift, RIP
Thanks, Hippocrates. I've not made any secret, over the years, of the fact that I love Thai food. Or of the marvelous opportunity--over six years ago now--that I enjoyed an actual cooking class in actual Thailand. But I sometimes suffer the consequences of living in the northeastern United States, far away from some of those… Continue reading Thai Basil Hack: “Desperate Times…”
Some things never change. One-hundred seventy years ago today, on 25th October 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava (1) 670 British soldiers under the command of Lord Cardigan(2), launched an ill-fated attack upon a well-defended Russian artillery battery and sustained 40 percent casualties in the form of approximately 120 killed, and at least 160 wounded.… Continue reading This Day in Knitting History. And Something Else: “Boldly they rode and well”
Forty-one years ago, suicide bombers detonated two truck bombs in Beirut, Lebanon. At the end of the day, October 23, 1983, 241 US military personnel, 58 French military personnel, and half-a-dozen civilians were dead. So--praise be--were the two attackers. I was twenty-nine years old. I remember it clearly. It was an event which set in… Continue reading Quote of the Day: “They Came in Peace,” October 23, 1983
Mitzi Gaynor, star of stage and screen for over seventy years, died today at the age of 93. She's an inextricable part of my childhood, and the female lead in the first movie I ever saw. Here's a reflection from a couple of years ago: I saw my first movie, ever, in the UK, when… Continue reading “Get a Load of Honeybun Tonight!” Rest in Peace, Mitzi Gaynor.
Somehow (I’m still not quite sure how), a long-ago conversation with a friend turned to the topic of Oscar Wilde. You know, the guy who said “I can resist anything except temptation,” and “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.” That Oscar Wilde. But the quote that my friend… Continue reading Oscar Wilde on What Suffering Teaches Us
William the Conqeror WILLIAM THE FIRST was the first of our kings, Not counting Ethelreds, Egberts and things, And he had himself crowned and anointed and blest In Ten-Sixty-I-Needn’t Tell-You-The-Rest But being a Norman, King William the First By the Saxons he conquered was hated and cursed, And they planned and they plotted far into… Continue reading On the 958th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings
What? Poetry from the fourteenth century, expressing the opinions of the fourteenth century, is now so disturbing and triggering to children of the 21st that they need some sort of intervention in order to handle it? Please. From several years ago, here. For God's sake, you morons. Grow up: Imagine yourself, if you will, as… Continue reading OK, Now You’ve Done It: The Canterbury Tales given trigger warning over ‘expressions of Christian faith’
A few years ago, I wrote a post with this same title, recounting an experience from a few years before that. What follows is a shorter version of the original, and my conclusion--which hasn't changed; perhaps it's getting more emphatic with time--that we should be careful when sharing our "talent, time and treasure" with those… Continue reading Here Be Dragons . . . The Perils of Volunteering in Cyberspace