All Purls. No Swine.
She was born in Birmingham on January 23, 1912, into an England that was rending itself apart. Suffragettes demanding a woman’s right to vote were chaining themselves to Parliament’s railings, smashing storefront windows in Oxford Street, and living-room windows in Downing Street. Newly-empowered Socialist labor unions were flexing their muscle, threatening strikes in coal mining,… Continue reading For Jenny Alice May Mapson (Auntie Betty): 2023
January 12, 2023 is this year's "Kiss a Ginger Day!" No sense letting Prince Harry have all the fun, so I think I'll throw my hat into the ring with a post originally published on the member feed on Ricochet, six years ago today, on January 12, 2017. Tempus fugit, as they say....(If you're a… Continue reading Growing Up Ginger, 2023
This is the third publication of my Proverbs:31 post on this site. The last was almost two-and-a-half years ago. While I do occasionally republish posts from long ago, I try not to do it to excess. However, recent events, particularly those concerning the arrest of social media and influential member of the "manosphere," Andrew Tate,… Continue reading In Praise of Proverbs 31: 2022 Edition, For Andrew Tate
I've written, every now and then, about my New Year's practice of trying to sum up the year that's passed in just twelve words, one for each month. I'm not much of a diarist, other than in the ways I write my life here and on Ricochet, and as a rule I try not to… Continue reading Twelve Little Words–2022
Cross-posted from Ricochet: Oh, “dear, dear, dear.” I tried out that phrase, beloved of my father when dealing with a screaming infant, on my 18-month-old niece a few days ago. She immediately picked it up and responded, “deoo, deoo, deoo,” thus instituting the first two-way conversation we’ve ever had, even if only over the phone. I’m… Continue reading Music Hall Memories
My head kept telling me she wouldn’t live forever, but my heart simply would not believe it: Patricia Helen Mead Muffett, July 13, 1923–December 10, 2022, Rest in Peace. It’s the first time for a little more than one-hundred fifteen years, that neither my Dad, nor at least one of his siblings, has walked the… Continue reading Ave Atque Vale: Goodbye, Miss Chips
Thomas Herbert Mapson was my Auntie Betty’s father. (Strictly speaking, she wasn’t my auntie–being my great-grandmother’s niece–and her given name wasn’t Betty–they were Jenny Alice May–but “close enough for gubmint work,” as they say. He was born and baptized in Bilston, Staffordshire in the UK, on July 4, 1878. Given what I’ve found out about my… Continue reading In Memory, Thomas Herbert Mapson
A Ricochet post from four years ago, on November 10, 2018. Reposted today, November 10, 2022, in honor of the 247th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Some months ago, a United States Marine Corps career officer of my acquaintance observed that, for a foreigner, for a civilian, and for a woman, I seem… Continue reading United States Marines I Have Known and Loved–And a Couple of Others
So. Today's "Google Doodle" is (God knows why) on the subject of "Jollof Rice." Jollof Rice is a staple of West African (particularly Nigerian) cuisine, and it is--along with such stuff as fried plantains and groundnut chop, that with which I grew up. I've never found a recipe since, which approximated my hazy memories of… Continue reading Jollof Rice!
Today, September 30, 2022 is the fifteenth anniversary of my father’s death. He’s been the genius behind a number of my posts, so today I thought I’d let him speak for himself. Not (as has often been the case) as a Colonial Officer in Nigeria, somewhere between 1948 and 1963, but as a son and… Continue reading Recreating Worlds That I Have Lost