The wind this morning is relentless—hard out of the southwest or south-southwest. I can tell direction from the sound if it. South-ish winds roar past the sliding glass doors at just the right angle, like a forceful breath blown across the top of an empty bottle. I credit this niggling noise for my failure to focus on a single topic this morning, so FWIW, here are clips from four recent reads I’ll share with you.
THE HISTORY OF STINK:
We take for granted the absence of stink that, until not so long ago, was the norm among the unwashed. Which was pretty much everybody in town. Reading about it made me take a walk on the porch in the dark, in the wind, in the FRESH air.
Consider this one early paragraph from a long article about "The French Hygiene Offensive of the 1950s:
Historians reflecting on the trajectory of urban industrial societies usually think of factories and railroads, schools and shops, trade unions and women’s rights. But any of us who dropped into the daily life of fin de siècle France would be struck before anything else by the smell—of crowded apartments without ventilation or water, of outhouses with no means of evacuation shared by dozens of families, of clothes never changed, feet rarely washed, and teeth that had never met a toothbrush.
DO YOU KISS with “CUPID'S BOW”?
I read this term somewhere this week and had to know if I, too, possessed on. If you don't have one, better get a lip job. If you can’t pucker up with the Marilyn Monroe M-shaped upper lip, then why bother?
“One of the most distinguishing and desired features of the upper lip is that of its cupid’s bow shape. The double curve of the upper lip is called the cupid’s bow because it resembles the bow of Cupid, the Roman God of love laid on its side.”
Now you know!
WOOLEN SAILS from SPECIALIZED SHEEP CARRIED VIKINGS ACROSS THE GLOBE
I've been watching the History Channel's THE VIKINGS now since last March, but only recently begun to explore the historical facts about this mixed bag of fearsome"northmen" (and women!). Turns out the technology behind their successful excursions was as much about the SAILS as the boats beneath them. They were made, to very exacting specs, of WOOL.
And yes, these invaders really did lay siege to Paris—a couple of times—and established a permanent presence early. NORMANDY is the “land of the Northmen”.
Vikings woollen sails | Definitive Guide for seniors - Odyssey Traveller
THE NOT-SO-GREAT SALT LAKE A TOXIC DUST BOWL
Drought is a many-headed beast. Apart from the thirsty people, livestock, forests and agricultural crops that depend on having enough water, drought can make it hard—and dangerous—to breathe the air.
Great Salt Lake’s retreat poses a major fear: poisonous dust clouds | Utah | The Guardian
…the mounting sense of local dread over the lake’s rapid retreat doesn’t just come from its throttled water supply and record low levels, as bad as this is. The terror comes from toxins laced in the vast exposed lake bed, such as arsenic, mercury and lead, being picked up by the wind to form poisonous clouds of dust that would swamp the lungs of people in nearby Salt Lake City, where air pollution is often already worse than that of Los Angeles,
The toxic cloud that will likely result just a few years from now has been said to be "“one of the worst environmental disasters in modern US history”, surpassing the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979 and acting like a sort of “perpetual Deepwater Horizon blowout”.
BIRD BRAIN IS NOT THE PUTDOWN IT USED TO BE
I have been listening to and watching a local family group of crows for the past few months, and will likely write about that topic soon. I have failed to lure them closer, but still have hope. Meanwhile, I hear them calling from surrounding pasture margins and fragmented patches of forest, and wonder how they see and know the world and each other.
We are entering a time when our thinking about animal thinking is changing. This is a topic for future conversation here.