Well, since it's already the most popular thing I've ever put on the internet, I'll dust this thing off for a bit:
I made this list (with the help of a number of friends on Twitter)... a list of a world where the Presidents of the United States have almost always been bears.
#bearpresidents of the U(r)S(id)A(e)
George Washingbear
Jambavan Adams
Thomas Jeffurscub
James Madourson
James Monroar
John Grizzly Adams
Pandrew Jackson
Martin Van Bruin
William Henry Harriscub* (put down in 30 days)
John Ailuropod
James Kodiak Polk
Zachary Baylor "Tip a Canoe" (noted river ambusher)
Millard Killmore
Franklin Pierces-With-Claws
James Bearcannon (experimentally weaponized during Civil War buildup)
Abearham Lincoln
Pandrew Johnson
Ursus S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes (guess what the "B" stands for)
James Growlfilled
Chester A. Arktos
Grolar Cleveland
"Gentle" Benjamin Harriscub
Grolar Cleveland (second term)
William McKenai
Theodore "Teddy" Ruxpinvelt
William Howard Taft (only human candidate large enough to fit in bear suit)
Woodroam Killson
Warren G. Hibernating
Calvin the Pooh-lidge
Herbeart Hoover
Franklin D. Ruxpinvelt
Hairy S Trubear
Dwight D. Eisenhoney
John Fitzbearald Kennedy
Ling Ling Baines Johnson
Richard M. Nanuqson
Bearald Ford
Gummi Carter
Bjornald Reagan, "The Great Eradicator"
George Herbeart Walker Bush
Baloo Clinton
George W. Boo-Boosh
Bearack Obama
______
"Thomas Woodrow Wilson" anagrams to "How t' roam slow in woods."
Friday, January 25, 2013
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Kimchi
OK so kimchi. I've tasted a spoonful of batch 2 and it's sufficiently good to begin blogging about. *thumbs in suspenders*
Anyhow, despite six years or so in co-op grocery stores, the shameful truth is that this recipe is s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶n̶ adapted from the the New York Times a few months back.
So here's what I got out of it.
1) Sweat the cabbage in brine (while weighing it down and keeping it underwater)
I've used a big plastic bowl with an upside-down plate, and both Napa and Savoy cabbages. Napa are easier to get into the sort of mouth-sized ribbons you may want. I'm reasonably retentive about keeping knives, bowls, cutting boards, my hands, etc. clean, or as retentive as you can be in a kitchen that might make a safety inspector chuckle once or twice. No untoward molds yet!
2) 24 (batch 1) to 36 (batch 2) hours later, scoop it out of the brine (saving the brine), spice it, and pack jars of it along with whatever the hell ingredients and seasonings you want, covering it with the aforementioned brine. Surfaces exposed to air are not your friend.
I put fish sauce in the first one (and no chili powder or paste), so the resulting product was a bright ginger-yellow, somewhat over-garlicked, and unsuitable for vegetarians. Also, I can't get little carrot sticks to come out to save my life. I've still blown through four bottles in two weeks.
For the second batch I knuckled under and bought some gochujang. The color's more on point. You're supposed to use powder which has no extra salt, what with all the salt you're supposed to use in step 1. Hmm. I fudged the salt down a bit on the sweating step and it doesn't seem too bad, a little under-spicy if anything. Shouldn't have cut out the soy sauce too.
Batch 2 has shallots (I'm done with scallions, just done), daikon, and pineapple. I went real easy on the pineapple (I was warned against using too much as it breaks down proteins) and it's a good thing, since it adds a definite sweetish tang which it might be easy to over-do. This stuff is tasty.
The NYT says to start refrigerating it like three days afterwards, but I've got one more jar of batch 1 still sitting in the garage; it's been, what, almost two weeks now. You'll know it's working when the veggies start to levitate in the container; the bit of space at the top of the jar has given me no problems with spoilage but has taught me to keep them on a paper towel. I like mine seriously tangy and with as much bubbles as soda, but I gather I'm a bit strange in that regard. Also I drink the juice. Mmmm.
Below, a blurry picture of the bacon-kimchi sandwich I ate while preparing this post! It was a jocular idea but worked so well I'm going to do it again tomorrow.
Anyhow, despite six years or so in co-op grocery stores, the shameful truth is that this recipe is s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶n̶ adapted from the the New York Times a few months back.
So here's what I got out of it.
1) Sweat the cabbage in brine (while weighing it down and keeping it underwater)
I've used a big plastic bowl with an upside-down plate, and both Napa and Savoy cabbages. Napa are easier to get into the sort of mouth-sized ribbons you may want. I'm reasonably retentive about keeping knives, bowls, cutting boards, my hands, etc. clean, or as retentive as you can be in a kitchen that might make a safety inspector chuckle once or twice. No untoward molds yet!
2) 24 (batch 1) to 36 (batch 2) hours later, scoop it out of the brine (saving the brine), spice it, and pack jars of it along with whatever the hell ingredients and seasonings you want, covering it with the aforementioned brine. Surfaces exposed to air are not your friend.
I put fish sauce in the first one (and no chili powder or paste), so the resulting product was a bright ginger-yellow, somewhat over-garlicked, and unsuitable for vegetarians. Also, I can't get little carrot sticks to come out to save my life. I've still blown through four bottles in two weeks.
For the second batch I knuckled under and bought some gochujang. The color's more on point. You're supposed to use powder which has no extra salt, what with all the salt you're supposed to use in step 1. Hmm. I fudged the salt down a bit on the sweating step and it doesn't seem too bad, a little under-spicy if anything. Shouldn't have cut out the soy sauce too.
Batch 2 has shallots (I'm done with scallions, just done), daikon, and pineapple. I went real easy on the pineapple (I was warned against using too much as it breaks down proteins) and it's a good thing, since it adds a definite sweetish tang which it might be easy to over-do. This stuff is tasty.
The NYT says to start refrigerating it like three days afterwards, but I've got one more jar of batch 1 still sitting in the garage; it's been, what, almost two weeks now. You'll know it's working when the veggies start to levitate in the container; the bit of space at the top of the jar has given me no problems with spoilage but has taught me to keep them on a paper towel. I like mine seriously tangy and with as much bubbles as soda, but I gather I'm a bit strange in that regard. Also I drink the juice. Mmmm.
Below, a blurry picture of the bacon-kimchi sandwich I ate while preparing this post! It was a jocular idea but worked so well I'm going to do it again tomorrow.
Monday, May 23, 2011
An atypical height conversation
A dapper old gent spoke with me in the lagoon today; he mentioned in his native Germany that "they would say of a man like you, that he drinks from the..." Expressive pantomime followed, and then "from the gutters that hang down from the roof."
I allowed that it was quite a mental image; he thoughtfully added: "You don't want to drink that water." He was quite helpful in pointing out the remark was vaguely derogatory, but it would come as a surprise to me as to how.
The German saying I can find that most approximates the matter varies in its phrasing, but one version is:
"Wenn Dummheit lang machen würde, könntest Du aus der Dachrinne trinken!"
"If stupidity were height, you could drink out of the gutters."
...hm.
I allowed that it was quite a mental image; he thoughtfully added: "You don't want to drink that water." He was quite helpful in pointing out the remark was vaguely derogatory, but it would come as a surprise to me as to how.
The German saying I can find that most approximates the matter varies in its phrasing, but one version is:
"Wenn Dummheit lang machen würde, könntest Du aus der Dachrinne trinken!"
"If stupidity were height, you could drink out of the gutters."
...hm.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
More 251 club action.
It's hard to muster the energy to blog myself when there is an abler chronicler already on task. I'm Gigantor, if that weren't obvious.
Friday, August 06, 2010
A teaser...
One of the things I did on my two-week trip to Vermont recently was a tour of the Northeast Kingdom.
One of the other things I did on my vacation is sprain my left ankle, so this teaser will have to remain for now.
One of the other things I did on my vacation is sprain my left ankle, so this teaser will have to remain for now.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
be never once out of a delirium
Recognize the rotundity of the earth
with an invocation for Divine guidance and aid
The question is one which has exercised many investigators.
You will have fearful chilblains if you do so.
with an invocation for Divine guidance and aid
The question is one which has exercised many investigators.
You will have fearful chilblains if you do so.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
on Italian chickens
If the Italian city of Livorno goes by "Leghorn" in English, does that make the Loony Tunes' chicken's first name "Fovorno?"
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
the same idea translated in terms of art
I acquired this book recently; for those who don't want to click on a meaningless Amazon link, it is "Kenkyusha's New Dictionary of English Collocations: A Word Finder." In less delightful terms, it purports to express a broader semantic range of English concepts for the Japanese learner by translating giving sample usages instead of definitions. The...interesting nature of some of the sample collocations makes this book an excellent way to pass the time, as one sample entry will (I hope) show. I can't read the Japanese of the introduction, so I have no way of knowing what the emphasis on non-entry words is intended to express.
juice
express the juice of the grape
generate the gastric juice
squeeze the juice from the poor
[There is] no juice on.
a sweet watery juice
I trust we all have a broader understanding of the nuances of the word "juice" now. I know I do.
juice
express the juice of the grape
generate the gastric juice
squeeze the juice from the poor
[There is] no juice on.
a sweet watery juice
I trust we all have a broader understanding of the nuances of the word "juice" now. I know I do.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Still plugging away at a project from 2004, naturally...
"The crematorium, Mr. Strauss, is a truly divine thing. It helps the Lord God in hastening the return of man to dust. Imagine if men were made from some indestructible material. If that were the case…” Mr. Kopfrkingl shrugged his shoulders, looking at the elderly woman in glasses holding a beer, “then give him to the earth; but man, fortunately, is not indestructible. Do you know how long it takes before a buried man turns to dust? Twenty years, and even then the whole skeleton does not disintegrate. In the crematorium the process takes a mere seventy-five minutes, skeleton included, when you place the body into the coke-fired stove. People sometimes raise the objection that Jesus Christ was not cremated, however. This is true, Mr. Strauss,” Mr. Kopfrkingl smiled, “but that was something else altogether. I always tell these dear people this: they embalmed the Savior, wrapped him in linen and entombed him under a stone slab in a cave. No one is going to do the same for you, embalm you and wrap you in linen and put you in a cave…and the argument, Mr. Strauss, that the coffin cracks underground beneath the weight of the earth, and that it might hurt when the earth collapses on the head, that argument of course does not hold up, for when a man is, “Mr. Kopfrkingl tilted his head, “dead, he will not feel it any more…but there is yet another argument for cremation. Look, Mr. Strauss, if people were not allowed to be cremated, but were only buried in the ground, then what would we use the ovens for?”
from Burner of Corpses, chapter 1
from Burner of Corpses, chapter 1
Monday, February 15, 2010
Gritting my teeth and diving into the past
Reworking some sections of a book I started in on over five years ago. It's good to see my first work is still almost entirely usable, but there are some sentential-level techniques I'm only now working out. There are sections that are sloppy. I always worried about looking at early work, like it would be utterly neotenous compared to the masterpieces I'm obviously producing now in my more mature years (ahem) but in any event I'm hoping to move more works into the "finalized" category and get them out of my mental space, and maybe force myself out of my cowardice/apathy about submissions and publishing in general.
Nothing creepy about this loving father below!
“So this is Prague,” said Mr. Kopfrkingl, turning his gaze from the young pink-cheeked girl in the black dress to his left, “it is beneath us as though it were in our palms. As if we stood on a high peak and regarded the world spreading out beneath us. There is the Vltava, Charles Bridge, the National Theater,” he said, “those two towers are the Týn Church, the tower closer to us it the old town hall, and the truncated one behind it is the Powder Tower….the National Museum is over there, and the big white modern building behind it in Vinohrady is the Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord. Mili, look through this glass,” he told Mili, pointing at a pane of smoky yellow glass, and when Mili looked, he said: “That bit of glass is the same color as the glass we have in the incinerator windows. The most sacred windows of the world, for through them one can see directly into the kitchen of the Lord God as the soul separates from the body and flies up into the ether. Show me how our Prague looks through that glass.” He bent over and looked at then raised his head again and said: “It is true. Our Prague is beautiful.”
Nothing creepy about this loving father below!
“So this is Prague,” said Mr. Kopfrkingl, turning his gaze from the young pink-cheeked girl in the black dress to his left, “it is beneath us as though it were in our palms. As if we stood on a high peak and regarded the world spreading out beneath us. There is the Vltava, Charles Bridge, the National Theater,” he said, “those two towers are the Týn Church, the tower closer to us it the old town hall, and the truncated one behind it is the Powder Tower….the National Museum is over there, and the big white modern building behind it in Vinohrady is the Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord. Mili, look through this glass,” he told Mili, pointing at a pane of smoky yellow glass, and when Mili looked, he said: “That bit of glass is the same color as the glass we have in the incinerator windows. The most sacred windows of the world, for through them one can see directly into the kitchen of the Lord God as the soul separates from the body and flies up into the ether. Show me how our Prague looks through that glass.” He bent over and looked at then raised his head again and said: “It is true. Our Prague is beautiful.”
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Hirsute, horror, urchin
Proto-Indo-European had (it is reconstructed) a root *ghers- meaning "bristle."
A suffixed form with -tu in Latin gives us hirsūtus, whence "hirsute."
A lengthened form *ghēr gives (h)ēriciōnem "hedgehog" in Latin, which winds its way through various Frankish dialects until it emerges in English at yrichon in the 13th century, becoming "urchin," later acquiring the denotation of "ragamuffin."
And a suffixed ablaut form gives us he verb horērre, whence English "horror."
I originally laced these together when I realized I didn't know the derivation of urchin, and the semantic threads are fairly early to follow. [I have bitten bradshaw of the future's style here for a moment, if poorly, but still in good fun.]
A suffixed form with -tu in Latin gives us hirsūtus, whence "hirsute."
A lengthened form *ghēr gives (h)ēriciōnem "hedgehog" in Latin, which winds its way through various Frankish dialects until it emerges in English at yrichon in the 13th century, becoming "urchin," later acquiring the denotation of "ragamuffin."
And a suffixed ablaut form gives us he verb horērre, whence English "horror."
I originally laced these together when I realized I didn't know the derivation of urchin, and the semantic threads are fairly early to follow. [I have bitten bradshaw of the future's style here for a moment, if poorly, but still in good fun.]
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
A brief manifesto
I love massive, completist geographical projects, and a bike is an excellent way to set one in motion. Get as big a map as you can and a marker and start shading in street as you ride them.
I went a little crazy in Santa Cruz with this in May of 2008 after a breakup and got a compass to mark off concentric circles from certain locations. I've now been on more than 99% of the paved roads (and some unpaved alleys) west of the river in Santa Cruz--probably been on every street except a few up off Empire Grade by campus. (Empire Grade ate a frame when I was rocking a single-speed; it's hard to crank up there.) It was a fun way to plan day trips and lunch breaks from work, and great for building an intuitive sense of how the city fit together in ways that were intensely personal. I've had situations where I'm leaving someone's house in a neighborhood I rarely go to but still have a mental map of the entirety of the surrounding streets. I grew my own heads-up display, basically.
It's not necessarily for everyone (I really, really like maps). The great part about grandiose plans is that you can ignore them and just get lost and have fun. I ended up cruising down a lot of residential streets and sketchy areas and boring subdivisions, (and got a few odd looks when I would bike by the same intersection three times in five minutes, or up a short dead-end street only to turn away grinning) and it got a lot harder to "knock off a few streets" as the streets I hadn't been on receded increasingly far away.
Restlessness is one possible side effect, too. Having been on every street on the West Side, it's impossible for me to get lost or make new street grid discoveries, and the challenge of getting to the new ones can seem insurmountable. The new environments to map are farther off, and this detracts from the spontaneity of the original experience. But that's the beauty of it all. I get to see much more of the city around me than the paths of home-work-bar-beach. All the tiny little nooks and funny ways to hack the city to meet my needs, the shortcuts that wouldn't occur to people--they really help keep my physical surroundings an organic whole.
______
(walking your town would be a better manifesto, but these are some notes from 2008 that I've decided to transcribe and get out of my hair. Plus I should be tuning my bicycle, and bicycle theory is a great way to procrastinate on that.)
I went a little crazy in Santa Cruz with this in May of 2008 after a breakup and got a compass to mark off concentric circles from certain locations. I've now been on more than 99% of the paved roads (and some unpaved alleys) west of the river in Santa Cruz--probably been on every street except a few up off Empire Grade by campus. (Empire Grade ate a frame when I was rocking a single-speed; it's hard to crank up there.) It was a fun way to plan day trips and lunch breaks from work, and great for building an intuitive sense of how the city fit together in ways that were intensely personal. I've had situations where I'm leaving someone's house in a neighborhood I rarely go to but still have a mental map of the entirety of the surrounding streets. I grew my own heads-up display, basically.
It's not necessarily for everyone (I really, really like maps). The great part about grandiose plans is that you can ignore them and just get lost and have fun. I ended up cruising down a lot of residential streets and sketchy areas and boring subdivisions, (and got a few odd looks when I would bike by the same intersection three times in five minutes, or up a short dead-end street only to turn away grinning) and it got a lot harder to "knock off a few streets" as the streets I hadn't been on receded increasingly far away.
Restlessness is one possible side effect, too. Having been on every street on the West Side, it's impossible for me to get lost or make new street grid discoveries, and the challenge of getting to the new ones can seem insurmountable. The new environments to map are farther off, and this detracts from the spontaneity of the original experience. But that's the beauty of it all. I get to see much more of the city around me than the paths of home-work-bar-beach. All the tiny little nooks and funny ways to hack the city to meet my needs, the shortcuts that wouldn't occur to people--they really help keep my physical surroundings an organic whole.
______
(walking your town would be a better manifesto, but these are some notes from 2008 that I've decided to transcribe and get out of my hair. Plus I should be tuning my bicycle, and bicycle theory is a great way to procrastinate on that.)
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Limiting Magnitude triangles!
I remember these from...high school? Hadn't done much with them, and I won't tonight, but foggy nights are good for organization and theory, I suppose.
Establishing limited magnitude.
Establishing limited magnitude.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
A Bad Night of Stargazing Beats a Good Day At Work
Got out tonight about 11:30; clear skies in large chunks but definitely a frustrating evening. Canopus might have been above the horizon but fog banks rendered it pretty invisible. I might have been able to get as close as tau Puppis. Oh well. Could definitely resolve most if not all of Puppis and gamma Velorum to boot, so a good swath of the summer sky extending east towards Hydra and west towards what I presume to have been the vicinity of Caelum and Pictor? Anyway. Praesepe in Cancer was right overhead but nigh-impossible to resolve with my binoculars, Andromeda was fuzzy and indistinct, M79 was utterly elusive although I think I know where to look, Arcturus was hidden in fog over West Cliff though it might be out now...
Still, I suppose it to be a victory that I knew exactly where all of these things should have been; my "global" knowledge seems not to have suffered in a weather-and-sickness-related lapse in stargazing...
[Edit: ooo, and apparently that was Saturn rising in Virgo. Good to know.]
Still, I suppose it to be a victory that I knew exactly where all of these things should have been; my "global" knowledge seems not to have suffered in a weather-and-sickness-related lapse in stargazing...
[Edit: ooo, and apparently that was Saturn rising in Virgo. Good to know.]
Monday, January 04, 2010
Meta-Monday
Good New Year's so far; housemates and dogs filtering back into the house, so much sun it's not even funny, and even daily reading and writing, which had eluded me for a little while.
And dorky cephalopod evolutionary poetry. Where else would I put this?
And dorky cephalopod evolutionary poetry. Where else would I put this?
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Resolve II
Last New Year's I was naked in the Mojave. Well, for brief intervals, anyway, topping of a five-or six year streak of being in somewhat random places as the ball dropped. This is my third New Year's in California, and I'm spending it in Santa Cruz for the second time.
I'm of two minds about this--I want to travel more in 2010, and went farther than seventy-five miles from my house...maybe four times in 2009. That trip to the desert, my brother's wedding, and maybe two trips to San Francisco. So obviously I was a bit of a homebody.
But at the same time this year has definitely been the year I carved myself a home out of Santa Cruz--domestically my life is a lot less cluttered and a lot more ecstatic--so why would I have gone anywhere when I was building this? Still, there's so much left to see, and I have to make at least some of it a priority.
So part of me is sad that I don't get to go anywhere, but part of me wants a quiet New Year's in the town that is now my home.
Hrm.
I'm of two minds about this--I want to travel more in 2010, and went farther than seventy-five miles from my house...maybe four times in 2009. That trip to the desert, my brother's wedding, and maybe two trips to San Francisco. So obviously I was a bit of a homebody.
But at the same time this year has definitely been the year I carved myself a home out of Santa Cruz--domestically my life is a lot less cluttered and a lot more ecstatic--so why would I have gone anywhere when I was building this? Still, there's so much left to see, and I have to make at least some of it a priority.
So part of me is sad that I don't get to go anywhere, but part of me wants a quiet New Year's in the town that is now my home.
Hrm.
Resolve
I had planned on using this space to talk about resolutions, but I'm at the sort of stage in a new venture or two (and some old ones) where it almost seems profane to discuss them. Nevertheless, the semester break lasting until the 26th and my housemates all being gone for a while has lent itself to a certain amount of reflection, and a certain seeking of discipline.
I am making deals for productivity, happiness, and fitness, and concessions to rest and time off. What else do people do?
(oh fine for some reason I've battened onto this list of books to read. Maybe in 2010, maybe over a longer period. I'm already pleased to have found Malamud's short stories, having only read "The Natural." Very very much like a Fuks who had gotten out of Europe before the sorts of horrible things Fuks wrote about.
OK, so not really like Fuks at all, but sort of an alternate-universe one in some strange way. But when I'm typing I'm not reading, so I'll to that.
I am making deals for productivity, happiness, and fitness, and concessions to rest and time off. What else do people do?
(oh fine for some reason I've battened onto this list of books to read. Maybe in 2010, maybe over a longer period. I'm already pleased to have found Malamud's short stories, having only read "The Natural." Very very much like a Fuks who had gotten out of Europe before the sorts of horrible things Fuks wrote about.
OK, so not really like Fuks at all, but sort of an alternate-universe one in some strange way. But when I'm typing I'm not reading, so I'll to that.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Tale of Barbara of Mníšek (II/II)
Sixty years later she took lively interest in whether Franz Josef was going to marry Elisabeth, and asked every person who went through the woods about it. "She'll be unlucky with him," she claimed, "she should stay in Bavaria; pretty dresses aren't everything. I'd rather walk in these," and she pointed at her own clothes, which were already quite shabby and tattered, even having patches in places, for it had been eighty years since the time she had died. Once, when she met the forester of the time and told him about young Elisabeth's misfortune, the forester, perhaps from allegiance to his lord and employer, dared to express doubts, and at that she supposedly smiled and said: "Just so you know, young man, today your cows won't yield anything," and quickly disappeared into her cairn, and truly that day the forester's cows did not even produce a liter of milk and the forester decided: "Better not to argue with her and anger her." When, almost fifty years later, Elisabeth was assassinated, she was still walking about in her veil, and saying: "My words have come to pass; she should have stayed in Bavaria. She shouldn't have gotten on a boat or had her twenty-five year old son...” She feared the Prussians, and even hated them when they invaded the country; she said that no such thing would have been possible under Maria Theresa.
When Kaiser Franz Josef died and the world war ended, Barbara of Mníšek sat by the stream and pondered what was next. According to some she was supposedly quite angry that everything was over and failed and she said that it would never have happened so under Maria Theresa; according to others she merely pointed at her clothes, which were even more rotten and tattered, but that she wished for a republic. She stopped travelers much more frequently than before, especially at twilight, and asked about what was going on in the world, for news of the world, and how the money was holding out. When anyone told her that there were carriages without horses going along the highways, and others along rails that were similar, but much longer and shrieking with steam, she would shake her head and say that no such things were possible under Maria Theresa. She would sometimes hear rumbles and roars over the forest, which seemed to be getting more frequent and more terrifying in recent years, and she would ask people what sort of huge birds they were; those had not existed, as far as she could recall, under Maria Theresa at all. "Those are aeroplanes, which fly under their own power," someone particularly daring told her, and she just shook her head and sighed. In recent years people in and around the village claimed that Barbara of Mníšek went through the woods with something strange on her shoulder, some sort of stick or rifle, basket or something, and that her skirts were so shabby after a hundred and seventy years that they were almost disintegrating...
But after the second world war her cairn collapsed in the woods outside of Mníšek. In its place today there are only a few stones overgrown with moss, wild brambles and raspberries. Barbara has lost her grave. Still, though, poor Barbara of Mníšek was quite the prophet. Birds now come to rest on the wreckage of her cairn and feed themselves from the wild bushes.
God only knows if she still appears to anyone in the ravaged forests today...
1966
______
Elisabeth of Bavaria. Her assassination is a sad tale of how extremely tight corsets can keep you from realizing you've been stabbed in the heart.
When Kaiser Franz Josef died and the world war ended, Barbara of Mníšek sat by the stream and pondered what was next. According to some she was supposedly quite angry that everything was over and failed and she said that it would never have happened so under Maria Theresa; according to others she merely pointed at her clothes, which were even more rotten and tattered, but that she wished for a republic. She stopped travelers much more frequently than before, especially at twilight, and asked about what was going on in the world, for news of the world, and how the money was holding out. When anyone told her that there were carriages without horses going along the highways, and others along rails that were similar, but much longer and shrieking with steam, she would shake her head and say that no such things were possible under Maria Theresa. She would sometimes hear rumbles and roars over the forest, which seemed to be getting more frequent and more terrifying in recent years, and she would ask people what sort of huge birds they were; those had not existed, as far as she could recall, under Maria Theresa at all. "Those are aeroplanes, which fly under their own power," someone particularly daring told her, and she just shook her head and sighed. In recent years people in and around the village claimed that Barbara of Mníšek went through the woods with something strange on her shoulder, some sort of stick or rifle, basket or something, and that her skirts were so shabby after a hundred and seventy years that they were almost disintegrating...
But after the second world war her cairn collapsed in the woods outside of Mníšek. In its place today there are only a few stones overgrown with moss, wild brambles and raspberries. Barbara has lost her grave. Still, though, poor Barbara of Mníšek was quite the prophet. Birds now come to rest on the wreckage of her cairn and feed themselves from the wild bushes.
God only knows if she still appears to anyone in the ravaged forests today...
1966
______
Elisabeth of Bavaria. Her assassination is a sad tale of how extremely tight corsets can keep you from realizing you've been stabbed in the heart.
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