sensitivefern

[sensitivefern]

Mowing the grass once a fortnight in pleasure grounds, as now practised, is a costly mistake. We want shaven carpets of grass here and there, but what nonsense it is to shave it as often as foolish men shave their faces! There are indeed places where they boast of mowing forty acres! Who would not rather see the waving grass with countless flowers than a close surface without a blossom? Think of the labour wasted in this ridiculous work of cutting the heads off flowers and grass. Let much of the grass grow till fit to cut for hay, and we may enjoy it in a world of lovely flowers that will blossom and perfect their growth before hay time...

[William Robinson]

===

Essays have also given us much concern. Practically all of the essayists who flourish in the United States devote themselves to whimsical fluff in imitation of Charles Lamb – stuff that is poor in ideas and conventional in execution. We have tried hard to find and encourage writers with more to say, but so far without much success. However, even in this bleak field we have unearthed an occasional piece of sound quality – for example Stephen Ta Van’s ‘Tante Manhattan’ and Thomas Beer’s ‘The Rural Soul’ and ‘The Mauve Decade’ – and we have hopes of doing much better hereafter.

In the field of the short story we believe that we have presented a great deal of genuinely first-rate work. The stories we print are not reprinted in the annual anthologies issued by admirers of the late O. Henry, but in a good many cases the authors of them – for example, Mr. Hecht, Sherwood Anderson and F. Scott Fitzgerald – have later shown their quality by brilliant successes in the larger form of the novel.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

Through the witch Samuel tells Saul that he will lose his kingdom and also his life. This is indeed occult cosmology... [...] And now to illustrate the influence of literal scripture upon the human mind, and history, let us quote the eminent legal authority, William Blackstone, who in 1765 said: ‘To deny the possibility, nay actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament’. Thus on the authority of ‘the word of God’ this eminent jurist poured legal oil on the fires of religious fanaticism. On the same authority, Pope Innocent VII in 1484 issued his famous ‘Witch Bull’, authorizing women, who should have been sent to psychiatrists, to be burned at the stake. In two years, 1515 and 1516, the Catholic Church burned over five hundred Protestant witches. A thing of the past, you say, so why recall it? Yes, witch-burning is past, but not the witch-burning mentality. There are still with us priests who would burn in boiling oil the dissident Protestants – modern Torquemadas without an Inquisition. Though of the atomic age, they still believe in witches, pacts with the devil, and the literal ‘word of God’.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Muscari, Hyancinthus, Veltheimia, and Lachenalia can be propagated from... leaf cuttings. A mature, vigorous, still green leaf is cut from the bulb. A complete leaf can be cut into two or three pieces. Each is placed... in a peat moss and sand rooting medium, with the lower edge buried a couple of inches below the surface. Keep moist – high humidity and bottom heat are both necessary. In two weeks to a month, small bulblets will form on the bottom of the leaf, after which they can be planted...

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

Centaurea The ‘Sultan of Constantinople’ was a fan... ‘I’ am a fan of the Florence Mix... also recommended: ‘Garnet’... the basket flower (Centaurea americana) ‘is hardly seen in North American gardens, although it is produced as a cut flower by growers around the world’... they reach a yard in height, or higher; ‘Jolly Joker’ is the standard cultivar...

===

Hacquetia epipactis Zones 4-9... flowers early... to 8 in. ... cold-stratify for 3 weeks; sow and keep close to 55°... sow indoors 10 weeks before last expected frost, or sow fresh seed in autumn – on surface... sun/shade... divide plants in spring...

butterfly lily, garland lily, ginger lily | Hedychium This half-hardy perennial will, of course, be grown as an annual in your area; lift rhizomes in fall and store in cool, dry place... the foliage is deemed to be highly ornamental, while the flowers are pleasant to the nostrils; plants reach as high as 12 ft. ...

French honeysuckle, sulla clover | Hedysarum Zones 4-9, it is said, but, all in all, they would prefer a more Portlandia climate... cut plants to the ground in autumn... propagate by dividing in spring or fall; also, root cuttings...

===

❚Why Was Bill O'Reilly Really Fired?

Convicted killer and former New England Patriots star Aaron J. Hernandez was found han...

America Is More Religious Than Other Countries Due To Its Proximity To The Gates Of Hell

David Frum Unironic : SAD! White House sidewalk to be closed to public permanently

D'Oh! Did you forget? Today is "The Simpsons" 30th anniversary of first appearing on TV.

Possible Reunion? Paul Simon And Art Garfunkel Are Driving Toward Each Other At 120 MPH On A Highway In The Desert

A timeline of Bill O’Reilly’s vileness

Vegetarian Begins Sad, Private Routine Of Scanning Menu For Little Green V’s

Making harassing calls while walking around in your underwear is no way to go through life, grandma

Nope. Not gonna die. Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture

When you're a registered sex offender and you don't have any children of your own, you should probably skip out on attending high school music recitals

[sensitivefern]

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN and I took over the editorial direction of the Smart set in the summer of 1914, just after the outbreak of the late war. [...] We differ radically in many ways. For example, Nathan is greatly amused by the theatre, even when it is bad, whereas I regard it as a bore, even when it is good. Contrariwise, I am much interested in politics, whereas Nathan scarcely knows who is vice-president of the United States.

But on certain fundamental issues we are thoroughly agreed, and it is on the plane of these fundamentals that we conduct the Smart Set, and try to interest a small minority of Americans. Both of are against the sentimental, the obvious, the trite, the maudlin. Both of us are opposed to all such ideas as come from the mob, and are polluted by its stupidity: Puritanism, Prohibition, comstockery, evangelical Christianity, tin-pot patriotism, the whole sham of democracy. Both of us, though against socialism and in favor of capitalism, believe that capitalism in the United States is ignorant, disreputable and degraded, and that its heroes are bounders. Both of us believe in the dignity of the fine arts, and regard Beethoven and Brahms as far greater men than Wilson and Harding. Both of us stand aloof from the childish nationalism that now afflicts the world, and regard all of its chief spokesmen, in all countries, as scoundrels.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

Saul now disqualified, Samuel anoints David, son of Jesse. It should be son of Jacob, for he was like cunning old Jacob reborn again. But ‘...the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, and he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand... and Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin; but he slipped away out of Saul’s presence, and he smote the javelin into the wall: and David fled, and escaped that night’ (1 Sam. 19:9, 10.) He escaped to the wilderness, and there wandered about like Joseph and Moses, there became naked like Adam and Noah. There also he cut off Saul’s skirt and robbed him of the desire to kill, as Delilah cut off Samson’s hair and robbed him of the power to kill.

Eventually Samuel dies, and the insane Saul is left to govern Israel alone. Unable to meet the Philistines, in spite of the Lord appointing him to destroy them, he resorts to the dead Samuel for advice. And here we have that curious story about ‘the witch of Endor’. In spite of Moses’ ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, there were some in Saul’s time – a hint that Saul is prior to Moses. The Bible does not tell us the name of this one; it was, however, Sedecla, and she had a ‘familiar spirit’.

And the king said unto her, Be not afraid; for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out to the earth. And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stopped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself (1 Sam. Chap. 28).

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Sussex, England, where Gravetye is located, has long been known for its fine deciduous forests. Though William Robinson often focused on herbaceous plants... he seems to have had the greatest enthusiasm for woodlands. His 1906 book, The Garden Beautiful: Home Woods, Home Landscape, is a clear promotion of woodlands for their intrinsic value... [...] Gardens inspired by Robinson’s ideas are often referred to as ‘Robinsonian’. In North America, there is no greater Robinsonian wild garden than at Winterthur, in northern Delaware. Winterthur is much more than a woodland garden. Like Gravetye, it has forests and fields, ponds and streams, and memorable views between all of these. Also like Gravetye, Winterthur was once a working farm with livestock in the fields, and both places still have rural railroads at their peripheries.

===

Queen Anne’s thimble, standing cypress, bird’s eyes | Gilia This genus is ‘little used’, perhaps because they are ‘rather sloppy’ and the flowers close up shop on cloudy days... seeds may be sown directly outdoors 2-3 weeks before last expected frost; autumn in milder climes... self-seeds...

sea poppy, horned poppy | Glaucium To 1 yard in height... zones 3-9... the seed pods are also comely... start seed indoors; peat pots... rich, moist, cool soils mean the sea poppy will not be long for this world... self-seeds...

globe daisy | Globularia Mounding perennial... cold-stratify seeds 6-8 weeks... sow on surface and keep neat 55°F... full sun-part shade... divide in spring...

===

❚Horse and Cat Pferd vom wilden Kater geritten... Horse and dog play together

Henry L. Hillman, the unpretentious Pittsburgh billionaire financier who quietly gave of his time and money to become one of the most generous benefactors in the city’s history, died Friday. He was 98.

7 Incredible Sex Positions We Can’t Wait To Show Jesus When He Returns To Earth

New Yorkers stop to watch the "Seinfeld" finale in Times Square - May 14, 1998 ...Frank Sinatra died while this was airing. They were able to get him to the hospital quicker because people were watching this instead of driving.

[sensitivefern]

A NOTE TO AUTHORS

THE AIM OF THE Smart Set, in general, is to interest and amuse the more civilized and sophisticated sort of reader – the man or woman who has lived in large cities, and read good books, and seen good plays, and heard good music, and is tired of politicians, reformers and the newspapers. [...] Poetry? We print twenty to thirty poems every month, and a good many of them get into the anthologies. But don’t send us sentimental things of the Poet’s Corner variety; we are tired of odes to the meadow thrush, and war-songs arguing that the death of a soldier is a grief to his mother, and clumsy attempts at vers libre, and lyrics of amour in which ‘heart’ rhymes with ‘part’. [...] To Your Interest and for Our Convenience

Put your full name and address in the upper left-hand corner of the first page of your manuscript.

Enclose a fully stamped and self-addressed envelope.

See that your typist has ink on her ribbon. Faint manuscripts are very hard to read.

Don’t write unnecessary letters. Let your work speak for itself.

Send your manuscript by mail; don’t bring it!

If you send in a novelette, attach a brief summary of the plot, say in 250 words.

Don’t ask for letters of criticism. We are too busy to write them.

Don’t try to sell us anything until you have read two or three issues of the magazine from cover to cover, and so know something of our requirements.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

The people therefore demanded something new in Israel – a king. [...] In spite of the Lord’s assertion that Saul was perfect and would deliver Israel from the Philistines, he became insane and was killed by these Philistines. Such is the fate of every god when his work is done, including Saul. Because of a slight transgression ‘the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel’ (15: 35), and an ‘evil spirit from God’ came upon him. These words are a sore perplexity to our deluded clergy. They cannot deny them, neither can they explain them away. That is because they are students of Divinity instead of Reality. The result is that ‘an evil spirit from God’ is upon them also; its name is priestly theology. Even after reading five books about an evil God, they cannot attribute evil to him. Well, Isaiah did, and reported this God as saying, ‘I create evil’. He is the involutionary evil for which Evolution must atone, and His work, Creation, the ‘sin’ for which man must suffer. concealing this fact from man is the priestly sin of the rest of the Bible.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Not only can geophytes be propagated simply by dividing a crowded cluster of bulbs or corms, but more arcane, yet simple, methods also work. A single scale broken off a lily bulb has the potential to produce a whole new bulb. Slice and dice a daffodil from top to bottom, and as long as each fragment includes a bit of the basal plant and a smidgen of two scales, each piece can regenerate into a new bulb.

The easiest way to multiply geophytes is by division. Dig up an overgrown clump of daffodils or snowdrops, separate them one by one, and as many as 50 separate plants may result. Dig and divide after flowering while the leaves are yet green. Brent Heath of Brent and Becky’s Bulbs prefers to wait until the leaves begin to fade to yellow. (after all, he points out, you wouldn’t like it if someone took you dinner plate away). Remember that it is the foliage growth that nourished the geophyte for the following year’s performance.

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

striped cream violet | Viola striata Zone: 4 to 7... Easily grown in average, medium to wet, well-drained soils in part shade. Prefers moist, humusy soils. Does not spread by runners, but freely self-seeds... No serious insect or disease problems. Profuse self-seeding borders on being weedy in more formalized plantings... Mass in shaded areas of woodland gardens, wildflower gardens or native plant gardens... Viola labradorica × Viola striata → Viola ×‌eclipes H.E. Ballard is a very rare violet hybrid known from MA, RI. It is identified by its very pale blue corolla with a large white center and sparsely ciliate sepals (both character states are intermediate between the parents). It is further distinguished by its heavily fringed stipules, long sepal auricles, and abruptly acuminate leaf blades (in these traits the hybrid is more like V. striata).

===

➤Saw first ringnecked pheasant for x-number of years; south field; cat.

❚50 years ago, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to enter the Boston Marathon. Today, she'll run it again.

Sylvia Moy, Motown pioneer who co-wrote numerous Stevie Wonder hits, has died at 78

North Korea Successfully Detonates Nuclear Scientist

Girls Lena Dunham show leaves as it arrived: with bravery, honesty and nudity The HBO sitcom has bowed out after six controversial, but undeniably influential, seasons. We look back on some of the highlights

HOW OXYGEN TRAVELS THROUGH YOUR SHITTY BODY

[sensitivefern]

But, like Lincoln, he distrusted reformers and extremists. His hatred grew for the slave trade, which in the fifties showed signs of revival under the stimulus of immense profits in the new cotton lands along the Mississippi. He did not approve of John Brown’s attempt to begin revolt in the South, though he admired the courage of the old man.

I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia, (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d.)

But he appeared at the trial of F. B. Sanborn in Boston, who had been charged with conniving in John Brown’s raid, ready, with others, to resist by force any infringement of the liberties of the individual. Yet as the Calhounites seemed to him arrogant, so his practical politician’s mind grouped the Abolitionists with useless, if not dangerous meddlers. They were idealists, but they looked to him, when he attended their convention in 1857, like a ‘line of bald-headed Quaker-looking gentlemen, mostly wearing white neckcloths, generally surmounted by benevolent faces’

[Henry Seidel Canby]

===

Now as soon as Samuel reached manhood he continued the slaughter begun by Moses and Joshua; he utterly destroyed the Ammonites and then the Amalekites whose king was Agag – ‘And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal’ (1 Samuel 15: 33). In all these wars the Hebrews carried their God about in a cage, the ark of the covenant; and so terrible was this God that when some curious ones peeked in ‘he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men’ (1 Samuel 6:19). Again we ask, Is this the God of Jesus or of nature? There is but one and if this one be the God of nature, what are we worshiping the other for? In doing so, we are all idolaters, for he is a false God. Samuel’s own sons refused to worship this murderous God and so, like eleven of Uranus’s sons, were declared unfit to succeed their father. The people therefore demanded something new in Israel – a king.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Gardeners who think nothing of sowing seed to raise annuals, vegetables, and even perennials often hesitate at the idea of raising geophytes from seed. There is nothing extreme or terribly exotic about raising bulbous, cormous, or tuberous plants from seed; all it takes is some patience. Brent Heath of Brent and Becky’s Bulbs mentioned... that, typically, most geophytes flower in three to five years from seed. Dutch growers find it easy to raise species alliums from seed, and the blue shades of Anemone blanda are raised from seed, as is Arum italicum, some species of Chionodoxa, and more.

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

❚Just over half a mile from the Trevi Fountain, in the center of Rome, is Villa Aurora. The villa was built in 1570 and is currently presided over by a princess. Her full name is Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Principessa di Piombino. “You can just call me Rita,” she said.

DID YOU KNOW YAWNING AND STRETCHING AT THE SAME TIME IS CALLED PANDICULATING?

Texas warns residents about largest outbreak of mumps in over two decades. If only there was something, say a common vaccine, that could have prevented such an outbreak

[sensitivefern]

I met Maugham... but saw him very seldom... though he was always very polite to me. Born in 1874, he got his early education at King’s School, Canterbury, and then studied medicine, but after getting his degree found that practice was distasteful to him, and so took to writing. [...] He was reputed in New York to be a homosexual of the school of Hugh Walpole, and I was thus somewhat shy of his society. [...] Very few of his books save Of Human Bondage and The Moon and Sixpence were worth reading...

[H.L. Mencken]

===

Certain it is, Samson was no mortal. According to various Midrashim, his shoulders were sixty ells broad, and when the spirit of the Lord was upon him, he could step from Zorah to Eshtaol. So strong was he, he could pick up two mountains and rub them together. When he was thirsty, a well of water sprang from his teeth. In the Bible the water springs from the ass’s jaw with which he slew a thousand Philistines – but that was before he met Delilah.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

It is a classic among American diatribes, and should be better known especially among those who think of Walt as a blend of sweetness, light, and sensuality:

...the meanest kind of bawling and blowing office-holders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murders, fancy men, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-train’d to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, spongers, ruin’d sports, expell’d gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of concealed weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarr’d inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots’ money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combings and born freedom-sellers of the earth. And whence came they?

===

These days, though, there is more to concern the gardener than the efficacy or lack thereof of bone meal as a nutrient or the nuisance value of attracting skunks and dogs: it might just kill you. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE for short, is a rare, brain-rotting disease thought to be primarily transmitted from the brain tissue of infected cattle. Jim Shields, who enthusiastically grows bulbs as an avocation, explains the risks thusly:

...I would say that there has to be a possibility of contracting BSE through bone meal. The agent is a prion, a rearranged version of a normal body protein. The rearranged form, actually refolded, is then pathogenic. Steam does not inactivate it; and neither, obviously, do digestive enzymes in the gut. Breathing the dust should work even better than eating it if you want to contract the disease. Its manifestation in humans is known as vCJD, or the variant of Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease. People who want to sell you bone meal and other animal byproducts will vigorously dispute this. There are also people who dispute that we are undergoing global warming. In cases where future personal profits are involved, the value of the opinions offered should be seriously questioned. I have banished all forms of bone meal from my garden, permanently. It is not worth the risk. Even though that risk should be very small, to is not equal to zero. Getting vCJD would be a really unpleasant way to die.

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

white wood aster | Eurybia divaricata Native to eastern North America... the ray florets are few and widely spaced... found in ‘open, dry to mesic woodlands, forest edges, thickets, clearings, and shady roadsides up to 1700m in elevation’... the fruits are brown achenes, around 4 mm long, topped with a pappus of reddish bristles (sometimes cream-colored bristles)... situate it in partial shade, surrounded by other perennials... attracts butterflies... ‘~ has the rare quality of being able to tolerate drier shade conditions caused by the competing roots of trees and shrubs’... a few cultivars exist – ‘Eastern Star’ (showy flowers), ‘Fiesta’, and ‘Snow-Heron’ (variegation)...

===

Knives Your knife should be a medium size two-bladed affair, of the best quality. Do not get it too large and heavy. You can skin and quarter a deer with an ordinary jackknife. Avoid the "kit" knives. [...] A butcher knife of good make is one of the best and cheapest of sheath knives. The common mistake among amateur hunters is that of buying too heavy a knife with too thick a blade. Unless you expect to indulge in hand to hand conflicts, or cut brush, such a weapon is excessive. I myself have carried for the last seven years a rather thin and broad blade made by the Marble Axe Company on the butcher knife pattern... The fact that I have killed some thirty-four wild boars with it shows that it is not to be despised as a weapon.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

❚KentOnline would like to wish our readers a very happy Easter.

Bernie Sanders giving a speech from an ice cream tub has become a meme

This photo of Jeremy Corbyn in a train toilet has become a meme

As the politics turns hard right, the creased face of an elderly Hungarian Jew has become the prime target for resurgent nationalists across the world. George Soros is their essential enemy. If he did not exist, they would have to invent him. As the “George Soros” they credit with supernatural power does not exist, you could say that they have invented him.

[sensitivefern]

Thus Samson is the sun and his sacred hair its streamers.

Now the secret out, Delilah made Samson ‘sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him’ (16:19). As a precautionary measure, she also had him bound with seven withes – the septenate congealing process. Samson must have been a heavy sleeper, for he did not know he was being bound or shaved. Still, matter is a sleepy place; thus it was with Adam, Noah, Pharaoh, and even God, who had to ‘rest’ in it...

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

It was already my settled policy then, as it has remained ever since, to make no public protest against anything printed about me, however false and even libellous: as I have before noted, that plan bore defiant fruit in Menckeniana: A Schimpflexikon, published in 1928. There ensued a pleasant correspondence with Van Doren, and he was presently asking me to do some reviews for the Nation. [...] In 1934, more than a year after my name had disappeared from the Nation’s flagstaff, my former connection with it was recalled by the once celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling, and she listed me in The Red Network, her ‘who’s who and handbook of radicalism for patriots’. The imbecility delighted me... Her counts against me were that I was a member of the National Mooney-Billings Committee and the National Committee on Freedom from Censorship... and had been a member of the John Reed Club and a contributing editor of the Nation... As a matter of fact, I had never been a member of the two committees named... and I certainly never belonged to the John Reed Club, a frankly Communist organization.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

Notice that I have not mentioned bone meal. Even if it were an excellent fertilizer (which it is not), using bone meal in the garden is probably not a good idea. The way I understand it, in olden times bone meal was manufactured from fresh bones that still had some meat scraps attached. Today, bones are steamed to extract fat from the marrow, which is used to manufacture who knows what, soap perhaps. As well, the bones are mechanically scraped clean of meat scraps to be used for other by-products... what is left is nearly pure calcium phosphate, which is just about insoluble. I believe that bone meal is a poor fertilizer, low in nutrients, and attractive to every dog and skunk in the neighborhood. They will come digging for the bones they think are buried and in the process uproot the geophytes.

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

hairy chervil | Chaerophyllum hirsutum Native to central and southern Europe; boggy meadows, wet ravines, banks of streams and creeks, etc. ... clump-former... foliage is ferny and apple-scented... to 1.2m in height... hardy to zone 6... ‘In the garden, ~ is valued for its fine-textured and delightfully scented foliage and delicate flowers. It provides an excellent complement to many perennials with its ferny leaves and airy flower stalks weaving in between other plants’... one cultivar exists – ‘Roseum’...

green-and-gold, golden knee, golden star | Chrysogonum virginianum Native to the eastern USA... woodlands, forest clearings, edges, slopes of ravines... mat-forming... is said to be both stoloniferous and rhizomatous... fruits are 4-mm-long achenes... readily takes to the garden and is useful as a groundcover... cultivars include ‘Allen Bush’, ‘Pierre’, ‘Springbrook’, and ‘Eco Lacquered Spider’...

hardy ageratum, mistflower, blue bonset | Conoclinium coelestinum (= Eupatorium coelestinum) Native to eastern North America... bogs, stream banks, ravines, wet slopes, etc. ... forms vigorous clumps... no botanical varieties as such; improved selections include ‘Corey’ and ‘Wayside Variety’...

[When Perennials Bloom]

===

Socks Get heavy woolen lumberman's socks, and wear them in and out of season. They are not one whit hotter on the feet than the thinnest you can buy, for the impervious leather of the shoe is really what keeps in the animal heat—the sock has little to do with it. You will find the soft thick wool an excellent cushion for a long tramp; and with proper care to avoid wrinkles, you will never become tender-footed nor chafed. At first it seems ridiculous to draw on such thick and apparently hot socks when the sun peeping over the rim of the desert promises you a scorching day. Nothing but actual experience will convince you; but I am sure that if you will give the matter a fair test, you will come inevitably to my conclusion.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

❚Menckeniana: A Schimpflexikon is a collection of articles and quotations denouncing H. L. Mencken, collected and arranged by Mencken himself, with the assistance of Sara Haardt, his bride-to-be. The word “schimpflexikon” is from the German language; it means, roughly, a dictionary of vituperation.

‘Affluenza’ teen told he has to sit in prison for another year

My wife works at a local bookstore and to her and the team Amazon is the devil. However, they recommend ThriftBooks and AbeBooks all the time because they're like the local bookstores of the net. I love it, they have some rare stuff I hadn't been able to find even on Amazon.

[sensitivefern]

The matter of trousers is an important one; for unless you are possessed of abundant means of transportation, those you have on will be all you will take. I used to include an extra pair, but got over it. Even when trout fishing I found that by the time I had finished standing around the fire cooking, or yarning, I might have to change the underdrawers, but the trousers themselves had dried well enough. And patches are not too difficult a maneuver.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not; but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son. Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing. For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no rasor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines [Judges 13].

So here again the Hebrews are in trouble – the usual forty years, and the inevitable cause – sin. And here again we have a barren woman, the planetary mother, promised a son by ‘an angel of the Lord’. This is Genesis all over again. [...] Now this strong man had three women in his life... Only one has a name, the enervating Delilah, which means ‘the weakening or debilitating one’... Delilah is the door to darkness which in mythology means the underworld of matter. And that we may see these myths are all synonymous, Delilah is none other than Adam’s first wife Lilith, from the Babylonian Lilitu, an evil night-spirit.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

...He led me to his bathroom, and there motioned to me to apply my ear to a door connecting with the bathroom of the adjoining bedroom. I could hear the voices of four or five young girls, and it became immediately apparent from their talk that they had been guests at the party the night before. The conversation was really astonishing, for though I had read This Side of Paradise and had been hearing a lot about Flaming Youth, I was innocently unaware of the extent to which its revolt against all the ancient decorums had gone. The gabble of these fair flowers of Virginia almost made my hair stand on end. They seemed to know all the dirty words, and they used them with the freedom of Kipling’s single men in barracks.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

You would not expect to leave bare-root perennials sitting in a bag for a couple of weeks, which is something that happens to geophytes more often than not. While bulbs, corms, rhizomes, and tubers are more resistant to drying out than fibrous-rooted perennials, there are limits. Every spring, plaintive questions appear on Internet bulb forums: ‘I did not plant my [choose one or more: tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocus] last fall. Can I plant them now, or should I wait until next fall?’ An onion purchased at the grocery store is not expected to last more than a few weeks; why should other geophytes, simply because they are grown as ornamentals rather than edibles, be expected to be less perishable?

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

One variety of snow pea in particular, ‘Dwarf Gray Sugar’, is quite decorative by itself... [They] grow on short vines to 2 feet. This variety is somewhat sprawling and loose in habit and has purple-lavender flowers that bloom in beautiful clusters. The size and shape of the dwarf plants make them pleasant as part of a flower border... grow them in a large hanging basket with alyssum, or by themselves in large, decorative containers.

===

cuckooflower | Cardamine pratensis ‘For many years the ordinary lady’s smock or cuckoo flower was the only cardamine we had for our enjoyment’... when not in flower, it looks very similar to the common bittercress of the weed patch... mildly rhizomatous... rich, moist soil; part shade... ‘Flore Pleno’ is the standard cultivar... propagation: divide in spring; harvest offsets or plantlets; seed sown in the cold frame in fall...

giant scabies, Tatarian cephalaria, yellow-scabious | Cephalaria gigantea Plant in a mostly sunny site in the midst of other tall plants; Scabby tends to flop and could use some buddies to lean on... it would appreciate having moist soil to grow in... zones 3-8... divide in spring... the seedheads are ‘most wonderful’ to gaze upon... native to the Caucasus Mountains; grassy areas, stream banks, rocky slopes, alpine meadows... AKA Cephalaria caucasica, Cephalaria tatarica... the fruits are ribbed achenes...

taurus chickweed | Cerastium biebersteinii The Beibs hails from the Crimea... dry open spots on rocky cliffs and stony slopes in the mountains are its deal... rhizomatous; mat-forming... hardy to zone 4...

===

Pennsylvania bittercress | Cardamine pensylvanica

common chickweed | Stellaria media

green carpetweed | Mollugo verticillata

Thyme-Leaved Speedwell | Veronica serpyllifolia

American brooklime |Veronica americana

===

❚Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, an N.F.L. Force and Link to Football’s Past, Dies at 84

Lewis Lapham talks with Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

Rumspringa is a Pennsylvania German noun meaning "running around". It is derived from the verb rumspringen.

NASA announcement: There is evidence of hydrothermal vents on Saturn's moon Enceladus, a good sign for life there

[sensitivefern]

natal plum | Carissa grandiflora Brings forth fragrant flowers and brilliant red plumlike fruits... evergreen; to 18 ft. ... the fruits are oft used in making sauces, jellies, pies, and the like; can be eaten fresh and thrown in the salad bowl... if the winter temperature in your area ever goes below 24°F, Nat is utterly doomed... it prefers to live on the coast...

[Rosalind Creasy]

===

Korean goat’s-beard, dwarf goat’s-beard | Aruncus aethusifolius Its native region is the ‘alpine zone on Mount Halla on Cheju Island’... reaches 30 cm in height... can be utilized as a ground cover in a woodsy garden... hardy to zone 5... a few cultivars exist...

swamp milkweed | Asclepias incarnata It might grow well in average garden soil... ‘Two varieties of ~ are recognized in the wild. Variety incarnata, found throughout the distribution range, has glabrous stems and leaves, whereas variety pulchra, limited to the eastern part of the range, has pubescent stems and leaves’...

Campanula ‘You know it’s a campanula when you see a cup- or bell-shaped corolla made up of five petals fused at the base’; petals blue mostly... propagate by seed or cuttings; spring or fall...

===

Judges After reading about Moses and Joshua we naturally suppose that the subsequent books deal with subsequent periods, but again we say, the Bible has no such sequence. Its numerous excerpts are dovetailed together regardless of chronology... Indeed, we cannot even trust it when it is supposedly dealing with history. As an immediate instance of this, the second chapter of Joshua tells us this man of war killed Jabin, king of Hazor, but the fourth chapter of Judges says Barak killed him. According to the Yahwist account, Saul committed suicide, but the Elohist says an Amalekite killed him. Daniel is assumed to be contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar, yet part of his story was written in Aramaic, a language not adopted by the Jews until centuries later. The scriptures call Belshazzar a king, but the historical Belshazzar was never king but only regent for Nabonidus. Thus we cannot trust the Bible even historically.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Our success in launching the Parisienne and Saucy Stories... naturally suggested trying the same far from subtle device again, and by the end of 1919 we were busy with plans for the pulp that became the Black Mask.

The first issue was that for April, 1920. The cover, in full color, showed a man murdering another in a taxicab, with a third man dropping dead on the sidewalk. This picture had no bearing on anything printed inside, but it was gaudy and effective, and readers of such stuff are never too critical. The authors were all hacks of experience, and they produced stuff that seemed to please the murder fans, for the new magazine started off with an excellent sale and was quickly making money. In a little while we began to recruit authors of more skill, including S. Dashiell Hammett, a strange Marylander who had been a Pinkerton detective and was to develop into one of the most successful manufacturers of homicidal fiction ever heard of.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

❚...Anyway. The book I picked up was The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood; the poem I’m thinking of, “This Is a Photograph of Me,” was the first in the collection. It gave me major goosebum...

Christopher Walken got a thorough frisking from TSA Wednesday morning, and we gotta say ... the agent coulda used a little more cowbell. We're told Walken was flying out of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport, but opted for an individual screening instead of walken through the full body scanner. He's in A-town shooting "The War with Grandpa" with Robert De...

Bill O’Reilly Going On Vacation At Big Happy Farm Where He Can Run And Play

ಠ_ಠ

There’s a Reason So Many Latino Immigrants Are “Illegal” and European Immigrants Aren’t. (The Reason Is Racism.)

[sensitivefern]

The Laundry Problem Two undershirts and three pairs of drawers are all you ever will need on the most elaborate trip. You perhaps cannot believe that until you have gotten away from the idea that laundry must be done all at once. In the woods it is much handier to do it a little at a time. Soap your outershirt at night; rinse it in the morning; dry it on top of your pack during the first two hours. In the meantime wear your sweater; or, if it is warm enough, appear in your undershirt. When you change your underclothes—which should be one garment at a time—do the same thing. Thus always you will be possessed of a clean outfit without the necessity of carrying a lot of extras.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

In the summer of 1923, Harding embarked upon an ambitious cross-country tour to present his agenda to the American people in a ‘a voyage of understanding’... The trip... proved too much for Harding. In Seattle, buffeted by intense heat, he took sick. Doctors diagnosed it as food poisoning, but it was a heart attack. By the time his special train reached San Francisco, he had to be put to bed at the Palace Hotel. On Thursday evening, August 2, 1923, he felt better, and the Duchess read to him from a Saturday Evening Post article, ‘A Calm Review of a Calm Man’. It was about him, and he liked it. ‘That’s good’, Harding said. ‘Go on’.

And he died.

[1920: The Year of the Six Presidents]

===

‘The fool saith in his heart, There is no God’ – and another fool saith there is; but for two thousand years the affirmative fools have run the world and so they branded all who differ with them as atheists, infidels, social outcasts, etc. Yet what other attitude is there for the enlightened? Strip the theists of their mythological authority and you see the atheists have been right, not in denying a Creator, which they do not, but in denying the God of religion, which they do and rightly so. It is from these that all enlightened government comes, including that of our founding fathers, most of them atheists and we could fill pages with their atheism. In spite of this fact no avowed atheist can hold a government position. This too is due to religion. The Church fears atheism not because it is inimical to human welfare but because it is inimical to its welfare. The churchmen want their mythical God because in him they live and move and have their cake and eat it too. The Church has thus become an institution for the care and maintenance of God, not man. You can say anything about man, and the Church will do nothing, but speak one word against its God and the whole benighted crew will rise in wrath against you. They should read Joshua again, then ask themselves which is the true God, the God of Joshua or the God of Jesus? They cannot both be right...

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Consider traditional Japanese garden design. Japan is the only country of which I am aware that relies on native flora for its gardens. Compare and contrast this to the garden history of England, where historically the worldwide empire shipped American, Asian, and African plants back home to adorn gardens and glasshouses. In Japan, native plants have been traditionally used in extremely stylized gardens. The plants used – from trees and shrubs to ground cover plants, vines, and perennials – are native Japanese plants. Historically, the garden styles are very formal, high in maintenance, and ritualized in the shaping, training, and placement of plants, and it is the careful maintenance that makes the garden. A quick clip with a hedge trimmer would be an anathema... [One] of our professors said that if you took a piece of woodland and tended it – raking and clipping, perhaps doing some weeding but without additional planting – it would, over time, look like a garden. Clearly, the Japanese think of maintenance as the benchmark of a garden. I believe many American gardeners think in the opposite direction, that it is the plants that make a garden.

[Bulbs for Garden Habitats]

===

Giant puffballs are, in France, called ‘Tete de Mort’ (head of death)... dried puffballs can be used as surgical sponges, if you have run out of the commercial ones; can be an excellent tinder for starting your fires... ‘We are not sure who took the time to count them, but the average puffball is said to hold seven trillion spores, with large puffballs reaching upwards of 20 trillion!’... ‘The giant puffball is an easily-recognized mushroom and will make you happy’...

===

yellow giant hyssop, catnip giant hyssop | Agastache nepetoides Native to eastern North America... thickets, old fields, moist, rich, open woodland... reaches 2.5m in height... ‘In the garden, ~ is valued for its long, late-summer bloom, attracting scores of bees and butterflies. Plant it in large bold groupings in the perennial border or allow it to naturalize in a wildflower or woodland garden’... heat & humidity? no problem; hardy to zone 5, ‘possibly zone 3’...

===

❚The Beatles “Let It Be" hit Number One on the U.S. chart 47 years ago today

Dorothy Mengering, David Letterman’s mom, dead at 95

Mark Hawthorne, a Man of Few Words Except, ‘I Hate You’ After a short career covering offbeat stories for The Times, Mark Hawthorne left silently in 1969, re-emerging as the “Hate Man” of Berkeley, Calif.

Guitarist J. Geils Dead at 71 J. Geils Band musician who appeared on rock radio hits "Centerfold," "Freeze-Frame," "Love-Stinks" found dead at home

Michael Moore Kurt Vonnegut, gone 10yrs today. Deeply missed. What would he say about 2017?

The 'Pope Francis Laundry' for Rome's homeless opens at Vatican

Cat loves his horse Cat and horse in love Horse and Cat Playing

Intestinal bacteria may protect against diabetes A high concentration of indolepropionic acid in the serum protects against type 2 diabetes, shows a new study from the University of Eastern Finland. Indolepropionic acid is a metabolite produced by intestinal bacteria, and its production is boosted by a fibre-rich diet. According to the researchers, the discovery provides additional insight into the role of intestinal bacteria in the interplay between diet, metabolism and health.

What Caused Hitler This Time? Environmentalism, of Course. The Cornwall Alliance is a conservative Christian non-profit that rails against environmentalism. It is, of course, funded by the oil industry. Now they’re promoting a book that claims that the real cause of Hitler and the Third Reich was concern for the environment. Seriously.

The drought is over, but now L.A. is being swarmed by bugs

[sensitivefern]

I shall quote one more intellectual’s impression of the Whitman of this period... John Burroughs, the naturalist, had been powerfully impressed by the ‘Leaves’. As a young clerk in Washington, he met Whitman, and soon became a close friend and companion of his walks. [...] Burroughs, as much an enemy of the genteel age as Whitman himself, was a little timid. Like many nature lovers, he was hesitant in the face of carnal nature when it showed itself to be as instinctive in a man or woman as in a stag or a woodchuck. Whitman loved him, but doubted sometimes whether he was ‘one of us’, a true believer that the flesh and the spirit are intertwined in an equal importance. But he misjudged Burroughs’ devotion, which knew no criticism except when Walt began to write about birds and nature generally, where, indeed, even Thoreau had failed to satisfy the naturalist’s professional competency.

[Henry Seidel Canby]

===

[On] July 28 [1921], Franklin journeyed up the Hudson to a Boy Scout outing at Bear Mountain. A snapshot showed him in shirtsleeves, with arms folded across his chest. It was the last photo taken of him standing unaided.

Franklin traveled once more, to Campobello. Exhausted on arrival, on Wednesday, August 10 he swam the unusually frigid waters of the Bay of Fundy. Returning home, he felt chilled and awoke the next day with a 102° fever and severe back and leg pain. By Friday, he was paralyzed.

It was polio, and this ‘twentieth-century Apollo’ was now a helpless cripple... [...] In December 1921, Harding did what Wilson never would, commuting Gene Deb’s sentence, effective that Christmas Day. ‘I want him to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife’... [...] The House passed an anti-lynching bill, but Southern Democrats blocked Senate passage.

[1920]

===

The Jews firmly believe they are ‘the chosen people’; what they do not know is that that which chose them is the devil. If the reader cannot accept this, he should read again the book of Joshua. There this Jehovah commanded Joshua to kill thirty-one kings and possibly a million men, women and children. If this be not the devil’s work, what is it? And whom did this killer choose to do His dirty work? Jacob, Joshua, Moses and David, criminals all. Yet they were men ‘after God’s own heart’. If so, God must be like His men. This is what the Torah is telling us, and only when the Jews realize it will they understand themselves and their tragic history.

Now this is not anti-Semitism. The scriptural Jews are but symbols of life and that includes us all. Their ancient priests deceived us but so did their Christian counterparts and for 2,000 years.

These see no theistic lesson in Joshua. On the contrary, they use it to show us the rewards of faith in God. He stopped the sun, He divided the sea for His chosen; He sent down manna from heaven for them – and hailstones for their enemies. This is that false security the scriptures offer. On the basis of it fools let serpents sting them to prove their faith, other refuse inoculation and deny their children blood transfusion. Such false faith must be destroyed. A mythical God is a spiritual ‘Maginot Line’ – a comfort when all is well but useless in time of trouble, war, for instance. When that occurs both sides pray to this God, but God is on the side of the heaviest cannon.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Kamchatka bugbane | Actaea simplex Native to China, Japan, Korea, and other Asiatic regions... grows in damp gullies and wet meadows in subalpine areas... blooms in September... some cultivars include ‘Black Negligee’, ‘Braunlaub’, ‘Brunette’, ‘Elstead’, and ‘Hillside Black Beauty’...

lily of the Nile | Agapanthus If the ground freezes in your area do not grow this plant – in the ground; containers, yes... in fact, ‘they like to be pot-bound’, even the africanus types... ‘Peter Pan’ is the hardiest of the latter category...

Agastache: cultivars of note

‘Apricot Sunrise’ – drought- and heat-tolerant

‘Blue Fortune’ – ‘RHS Award’

Agastache foeniculum – the species

f. ‘Alba’ – aromatic

f. ‘Aureum’ – ‘comes true from seed’

‘Pink Panther’ – aromatic

rupestris – ‘very aromatic foliage’

===

❚The Maginot Line, named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany. Constructed on the French side of its borders with Switzerland, Germany, and Luxembourg, the line did not extend to the English Channel because the French military did not want to offend neutral Belgium. ...Having failed in its purpose, the line has since become a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security.

Ron Howard will direct a film adaptation of J.D. Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

Alabama 'Luv Guv' Robert Bentley quits over relationship with aide

A photograph shows Donald Trump with a diarrhea stain on his golf pants. ...FALSE

Slacktivism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[sensitivefern]

And that day Joshua took Makkedah, and smote it with the edge of the sword... he let none remain... Then Joshua... fought against Libnah... and he smote it with the edge of the sword, all the souls that were therein... And the Lord delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel, which... smote it... and all the souls that were therein... Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining... And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they... smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed...

Such is the record, but only part of it. Little wonder... E. A. Robinson on reading it exclaimed: ‘A most bloodthirsty and perilous book for the young. Jehovah is beyond a doubt the worst character in fiction’. We blame the movies and the comics for juvenile delinquency but there is nothing in them to compare with Joshua and his God. To help his ‘chosen’ this God destroyed Egypt and drowned its people; He even drowned ‘all in whose nostrils was the breath of life’. And we’re supposed to worship him. If so, then we are all devil-worshipers.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

bitter melon, foo gwa, balsam pear | Momordica charantia An ancient Chinese and East Indian vegetable; ‘It is rarely seen in grocery stores but can be grown beautifully in most yards’... only edible when the fruits are under 8 inches in length (best when under 4 inches); the ripe seeds should never be eaten, as they are ‘reputed’ to be a purgative... ‘Bitter melon has been widely planted as an ornamental in much of the world. Its lobed, deeply veined leaves and small, yellow flowers look striking cascading over a retaining wall or large oak barrel’... the fruits, if left on the vine will burst open to reveal their beautiful scarlet seeds... ‘If you are growing bitter melon in a container, you can provide stakes, or let the runners cascade over the side’...

[Rosalind Creasy]

===

The sulfur shelf... ‘grows in such abundance that it will become your favorite edible mushroom’... grows only on dead or living wood; is never found on the ground unless it chances to grow on buried wood, in which case it looks like ‘an orange rosette’... the margin is sulfur yellow, which matches the color of the underside... as it ages the colors fade; olds become deathly white... ol’ sulfur ultimately hollows out trees... culinarily, the outer edges are the newest growth and can be trimmed away with a sharp knife... if eucalyptus trees are growing in your area do not eat any sulfur shelfs growing on such trees...

===

Weyrich’s aconogonon | Aconogonon weyrichii Its wild territory ranges from Honshu, Japan, up to Sakhalin, Russia; gravelly slopes, alpine meadows, margins of marshes, and ‘along roadsides’... ‘In the garden, ~ is valued for its bold, lush foliage and showy flower clusters. Its ability to tolerate a wide range of growing conditions, including the presence of competing roots of nearby trees, makes it a useful companion plant in mixed borders, woodland margins, and similar informal settings’... the seed heads add fall beauty to wherever it is a-growing... it likes to have its roots consistently moist... zone 5...

Japanese bugbane | Actaea biternata Native to Japan and South Korea; moist deciduous forests roughly 1200m above sea level... rhizomatous... to 1m in height... hardy to zone 5... it comes to flower about a month after the North American bugbanes do...

[When Perennials Bloom]

===

sheepsburr, New Zealand burr | Acaena ‘A compact, creeping, and usually evergreen perennial genus valued for its mat-forming foliage and colorful round seedheads’... the burrs ‘are wonderful’; they appear prickly, spiny, and ‘threatening’, but they are in actuality old softies – they do, however, have a tendency to attach themselves to ‘pets or socks’... best grown as mats... they grow in any soil except those that are heavy and soppy... propagate by division, cuttings, or seed... hardy to zone 6...

===

❚Bashar Al-Assad Shares Laugh With Military Leaders Over Time He Once Wanted To Be A Doctor And Help People

If You Haven't Had Enough Of Alec Baldwin's 'SNL' Trump, Here's Baldwin Doing Trump And O'Reilly At Once "The scandal that everyone's been talking about all week, a scandal no one thought I'd have the guts to address head on, about the shocking allegations of gross misconduct and abuse of power... that have been levied against the Obama administration," Baldwin's host said at the top of the O'Reilly Factor sketch... After a commercial break – "As you know, 60 of our sponsors have pulled their ads from the program, no word of why yet," the host said, thanking companies like "Dog Cocaine," horse aphrodisiac Eliquis and the movie CHiPs for sticking with him – the host welcomed Trump to the program.

Louis C.K. Stand-Up Monologue - SNL Host Louis C.K. calls out chickens for being racist and wonders if giraffes are amazed by their long necks.

Tom Friedman Wants MOAR Strife In Middle East Ah...where would we be in a Middle East crisis without the Moustache of Understanding?

[sensitivefern]

By this time [c. 1930], alas, I was beginning to suspect that Red’s great days were over, and that he would never duplicate the magnificent reality and penetrating humor of Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth. His next book, Ann Vickers, was in fact trash – and Dorothy appeared to be its heroine! Meanwhile, stories began to reach the United States of his carryings-on in Stockholm, and later in Berlin. He seems to have kept more or less sober at the great banquet which followed the prize-giving ceremony and at the ceremony itself, but after that he went on a drunk in the grand manner, and gave the Swedes a show that they did not soon forget. All those that he met, including even royal dignitaries, became Nils or Gustaf instantly, and he slapped many a back that had never been slapped before. More than once he had to be convoyed back to his hotel and put to bed. The Swedes themselves are hearty boozers, but this time they met their master – if not in holding it, than at least in getting it down.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

And the Lord said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand [Moses’ rod] towards Ai; for I will give it into thine hand... And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned into Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand...

[...] We said the Bible is the greatest indictment of God ever written, but this Hebrew Hitler has only gotten started; we should read on until we either blush for shame or else admit that the Bible is a book of mythology.

... And the Lord... slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way... and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah. And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died...

And what had these people done that they should be stoned from heaven? Nothing except that they were in the way of ‘the chosen of the Lord’, for which he will do anything – miracles, murder, massacre and mayhem. ‘Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession’. Psalm 2:8. Today the Arabs are in their way so Ali Baba beware.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Shaggy manes can be dried successfully – but only if they are very fresh when harvested, and then they must be dried in a dehydrator set at a high temperature... the most common method of putting shags by is to sauté them in butter and freeze them immediately... ‘Fresh, frozen or dried, we find the taste of shags (caps and stems) to be outstanding!’... ‘alcohol inky’ (Coprinus atramentarius) is shag’s alcoholic cousin; is gray-brown as opposed to white... drunk inky is edible but it is advised that the eater shun booze during the feast – before, during, and after...

===

I used to think that hover fly maggots were the tiny caterpillars eating my rosebuds and I would pinch them off along with the aphids that surrounded them. I felt terrible when I learned that they were eating the aphids, not the plants, and that I had been sabotaging the very thing I wanted to encourage. We all know what adult ladybird beetles look like, but how many gardeners know that ladybird beetles’ larvae look like little black alligators? Therefore...

[Good Bugs for Your Garden]

===

❚David Letterman showed his fondness for Pearl Jam in his #RockHall2017 induction speech for the band. Read it...

Greenhithe pervert driver caught with pants down

Obituary: David J. Kelly / Former Pittsburgh Press writer, local TV personality David J. Kelly, whose aggressive but personable brand of award-winning journalism — including his “Golden Shaft award” — made him a popular part of Pittsburgh’s news media from the 1950s into the 1980s, died Sunday morning at the Brentwood Health and Rehab Center in Lecanto, Fla. He was 89.

[sensitivefern]

Underclothes

The true point of comfort is, however, your underwear. It should be of wool. I know that a great deal has been printed against it, and a great many hygienic principles are invoked to prove that linen, cotton, or silk are better. But experience with all of them merely leads back to the starting point. If one were certain never to sweat freely, and never to get wet, the theories might hold. But once let linen or cotton or silk undergarments get thoroughly moistened, the first chilly little wind is your undoing. You will shiver and shake before the hottest fire, and nothing short of a complete change and a rub-down will do you any good.

Now, of course in the wilderness you expect to undergo extremes of temperature, and occasionally to pass unprotected through a rainstorm or a stream. Then you will discover that wool dries quickly; that even when damp it soon warms comfortably to the body. I have waded all day in early spring freshet water with no positive discomfort except for the cold ring around my legs which marked the surface of the water.

And if you are wise, you will wear full long-sleeved woolen undershirts even on a summer trip. If it is a real trip, you are going to sweat anyway, no matter how you strip down to the work. And sooner or later the sun will dip behind a cloud or a hill; or a cool breezelet will wander to you resting on the slope; or the inevitable chill of evening will come out from the thickets to greet you—and you will be very glad of your woolen underwear.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

Joshua is so closely associated with the fall of Jericho in Hebrew tradition that it is therefore necessary to place his lifetime around 1400 B.C. Moses, on the other hand, appears to be linked to a period about two hundred years later, for the Hebrews slaved in the cities of Rameses. The story, then, of Joshua following Moses seems to be a confused version of two originally different episodes. ENGBERG, The Dawn of Civilization

Here the scholar substantiates our claim. Unfortunately he does not see that these stories are not history, hence his confusion. They are not confused versions of different episodes, but confused myths about Creation. Thus the book of Joshua is not a sequel to Exodus but a parallel, dealing with the same subject. In spite of the fact that both God and Moses selected Joshua as the next leader, it is not so. As Cain is the same as Adam, and Abraham the same as Noah, so Joshua is the same as Moses. The Bible presents Moses as a deliverer, or Savior, and this is both the nature of Joshua and the meaning of his name... Thus with Joshua we are right back at the beginning of Exodus again. And such is the entire Bible – cosmology mythologized.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Most people liked Warren Harding.

Not everybody, but most people. Alice Roosevelt Longworth didn’t like him...

Professor William Estabrook Chancellor, a professor of political science at Ohio’s Wooster College, specialized in disliking Warren Harding, really disliking Warren Harding – and also specialized in a broader, longer-held dislike of blacks.

There was a connection. Chancellor had convinced himself that Harding’s family possessed Negro blood. The specter of a mulatto in the White House disgusted Chancellor. [...] Chancellor wasn’t just an ordinary racist... There were plenty of those in 1920. He was extraordinary, obsessed with race, jealousy protective of all Caucasian prerogatives, and fearful of – no, paranoid about – the smallest steps of black progress.

[1920]

===

❚Steve Martin standup on The Smothers Brothers 1968 Donkey kills fox

Huge Blunder: CNN Just Accidentally Published The Article They Have Prepared For When Jesus Christ Returns To Earth

On Thursday night, virtually all national advertisers abandoned The O’Reilly Factor, the nation’s top-rated cable news show. The program included just seven advertisements and was, without warning or explanation, cut 15 minutes short.

Televangelist con man Jim Bakker hosted yet another in a seemingly endless series of self-declared “prophets” on his show and the two of them agreed that the agenda of the “army of God” should be to pray to God to eliminate anyone who opposes Donald Trump.

Fruits and vegetables' latest superpower? Lowering blood pressure Dietary potassium linked with lower blood pressure

Love it or hate it: Marmite may affect brain function

MSNBC journalist Brian Williams, called the US strikes on Syria “beautiful” three times in one disturbing interview. Williams included in his pro-war gush an un-ironic quote from Leonard Cohen. The fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from two US Navy ships in the Mediterranean killed six people were killed, according the Syrian army. But somehow, Williams saw beauty in such violence. He told an MSNBC anchor: We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two US navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen, ‘ I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons’. And they’re beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments, making what is for them a brief light over this airfield. Here's the bizarre clip...

The California drought is now officially over. At least until the next one

Don't Take Alex Jones' Medical Advice There's a "fungus epidemic." And Infowars’ Jones has just the supplements to stop it.

[sensitivefern]

Although Emilia-Romagna is one of Italy’s prime dairy regions, you can drive all the way across it and see scarcely a single cow. The cows are no longer grazed outdoors because the land is so valuable that it’s reserved for cash crops. Instead the farmers bring freshly cut grass and hay into the barns. The Consorzio allows no silage or other fermented feed.

[Ari Weinzweig]

===

And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.

And their foolish descendants have been worshiping ever since. What is more, they have taught us to worship. It therefore behooves us to know what kind of a God they and we are worshiping. [...]

And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt.

[...] And how could Aaron, a man, stretch his hand over the whole of Egypt?... And how could any race believe the Creator would do such things for it?

And they gathered them together upon heaps: and the land stank.

Here a meaningful touch is added by another writer: Moses and the Egyptian magicians vie with one another in doing miracles. The Egyptians duplicate everything Moses does until he produces lice, then they give up. The great man Moses has shown his superiority by creating lice!

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

...I had long been convinced that the Stockholm Academy, which chose the recipients of the prizes in literature, was a diligent player of politics. It would be impossible on any other ground to account for its choice of Carl Spitteler the Swiss in 1010, Wladyslaw Reymont the Pole in 1924, and the Italian woman writer, Deledda, in 1926. All of these were plainly third-raters, but Italy had not been honored since 1906 nor Poland since 1905... Hitler, I believe, was quite right when he denounced the whole Nobel Prize set-up as dubious and forbade any German to accept an award... [Though] George Bernard Shaw had pretended to refuse the award in 1925 he had nevertheless taken the money.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

Cut all morels by cutting the stem with a knife or pinching it off at ground level. Always leave the underground portion undisturbed... Cut all morels in half vertically and inspect the hollow insides. Any mushroom with cottony material inside its stem and cap should be discarded. The morel’s stem should be directly connected to the cap.

[Start Mushrooming]

===

❚...While K-Y Jelly can be and is used for a variety of different purposes, it is most commonly associated with being a personal lubricant used to enhance sexual intercourse and masturbation. During the act, one or more of the participants will typically apply a small amount to their genitals...

Viewers confused as BBC News gets 'haunted by laughing pink face'

Harry Shearer Stunned/saddened to hear Don Rickles passed away this morning. Just saw him again in LA recently--sharply funny onstage, sweet offstage.

Michael Caine voted for Brexit

Paul O'Neill, the founder of popular prog-metal group Trans-Siberian Orchestra, has died

Fleur de sel has been collected since ancient times (it was mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his book Natural History), although it was traditionally used as a purgative and salve. It is now used as a finishing salt to flavor and garnish food. The name comes from the flower-like patterns of crystals in the salt crust.

Klayman: I am Batman

Hee Haw - Premier Episode Opening (Aired June 15, 1969)

3 Liberal Celebrities Arrested for Conspiracy to Assassinate President Trump? CLAIM... Miley Cyrus, James Franco, and Seth Rogan were arrested for conspiring to assassinate President Trump. ...FALSE

Now Gwyneth Paltrow Wants You To Walk Around Barefoot!

A Fata Morgana is an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. It is the Italian name for the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths... One of the possible explanations of the origin of the Flying Dutchman legend is a Fata Morgana mirage seen at sea... The Flying Dutchman, according to folklore, is a ghost ship that can never go home, and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The Flying Dutchman is usually spotted from afar, sometimes seen to be glowing with ghostly light.

[sensitivefern]

‘Most mushroom poisonings happen to the mushroom hunter who relies on myths’... the cap on a mushroom is called a pileus, named after hats worn by some ancient Romans...

===

About your neck you will want to wear a silk kerchief. This is to keep out dust, and to prevent your neck from becoming reddened and chapped. It... should be of the best quality. The poorer grades go to pieces soon, and their colors are not fast. Get it big enough. At night you will make a cap of it to sleep in; and if ever you happen to be caught without extra clothes where it is very cold, you will find that the kerchief tied around your middle, and next the skin, will help surprisingly.

A coat is useless absolutely. A sweater is better as far as warmth goes; a waistcoat beats it for pockets. You will not wear it during the day; it wads up too much to be of much use at night. Even your trousers rolled up make a better temporary pillow. Leave it home; and you will neither regret it nor miss it.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

Some time before most of [the] reviews had appeared, the most interesting criticism of all had been published. It was printed in The Brooklyn Times of September 29, 1855, and was written by the man who best understood the purposes of the poems and was not unaware of their faults and probable reaction of the public. The author was Walt himself:

‘Very devilish to some, and very divine to some, will appear the poet of these new poems... an attempt, as they are of a naïve, masculine, affectionate, contemplative, sensual, imperious person to cast into literature not only his own grit and arrogance, but his own flesh and form, undraped... the begetter of a new offspring out of literature... preferring always to speak for himself rather than have others speak for him’.

And so he does, and very modestly for a Whitman who from now on proposes to fight the world until it accepts his poems.

[Henry Seidel Canby]

===

Former circus magician Timothy Drew... operated the ‘Moorish American Science Temple’, with fez-clad disciples in Newark, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago. Drew, who taught that black Americans were actually Moors from Morocco, foresaw ‘the inevitable destruction of the white or European rule, of which the sign from heaven would be a star with a crescent moon’. His movement would become the Nation of Islam.

[1920]

===

This is Exodus, a wholly uncomprehended book. In proof thereof let us quote from one of our professors of ‘Biblical Literature and Religion’. ‘The culminating incidents of the Exodus was the crossing of the Red Sea. That this was accomplished miraculously, is a matter of clear history’. And what is this ‘clear history?’ The Bible, of course, three times over. ‘The record furnishes us with the facts in triplicate narrative’. Therefore it must be true. But to continue: ‘True there is the admission that, up to the present time no direct reference to the Exodus has been found among the Egyptian inscriptions’. And then follows the credulous reason: ‘Such silence causes no surprise; it is the expected silence of a proud and contemptuous people regarding an event of humiliating circumstances’. This represents modern enlightenment concerning Causation, Truth and Reality, and then we wonder what’s wrong with us morally. Morals, like faith, are the evidence of things not seen, namely, consciousness, enlightenment, wisdom. These our spiritual leaders cannot give us, because they haven’t them to give. Our rabbis, priests and ministers are but ‘innocents abroad’ in an occult world. The scriptures are to them as the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the Rosetta Stone.

There is no end to the explanations these apologists find to prove the historicity of Hebrew mythology; they must prove it lest their own house of cards come tumbling down.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

...I returned to Baltimore, and before leaving the Smart Set office gathered up an armful of review books to examine on the train. Among them was a set of proofs from Harcourt, Brace & Company. Ordinarily, I refused to read books in proof, for handling the loose sheets was an unpleasant chore, but this time, on a sudden and aberrant impulse, I took up the sheaf as soon as the train plunged into the Pennsylvania tunnel. By the time it got to Newark I was interested, and by the time it got to Trenton I was fascinated. At Philadelphia I called a Western Union boy and sent a telegram to Nathan. I forget the exact text, but it read substantially: ‘That idiot has written a masterpiece’. The book was Main Street.

[H.L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor]

===

❚NASA's Cassini Begins Its Final Mission Before Self-Destruction

Start mixing your Arnold Palmers, it's time for The Masters.

Sweating, Shaking Pharmaceutical CEO Says He Can Stop Profiting Off Opioid Epidemic Anytime He Wants

Global Meat News is another one of those industry newsletters I follow closely.

At 73, Barry Manilow comes out of closet

White supremacist Bannon removed from National Security Council

Wingnut: God Will Curse Children and Grandchildren of Trump Critics

Fascist former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous tent city jail is being shut down by his successor after a commission recommended that it be closed. Arpaio, of course, blames it all on George Soros, presumably because Saul Alinsky is dead and Karl Marx isn’t returning his calls.

This Farthead Wants to Rename the St. Louis Zoo 'The Midwest Abortion Sanctuary City Zoological Park' Can you imagine hating something so much that you think, our only option is to involve the zoo animals? I understand that zoo animals don’t care about politics because they don’t understand them. I also can infer that they wouldn’t care even if they could understand them, because zoo animals are prisoners without rights or the hope of parole. But Missouri State Sen. Bob Ond...

Rose Hamlin, a One-Hit Wonder With ‘Angel Baby,’ Dies at 71 Ms. Hamlin’s group, Rosie and the Originals, had only one Top 40 hit, but it was a memorable one. A bittersweet song of teenage love recorded in a converted airline hangar in 1960, “Angel Baby” reached No. 5 on the Billboard singles chart in January 1961 and remains a mainstay of oldies radio. John Lennon was one of the song’s biggest fans. He recorded it in 1973 at the sessions for his album “Rock ’n’ Roll,” although it was not released until 1986, on the album “Menlove Ave.” His recording begins with a spoken introduction: “This here is one of my all-time favorite songs. Send my love to Rosie, wherever she may be.”

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A Penn State University trustee who said he was “running out of sympathy” for people he described as “so-called victims” of Jerry Sandusky is no longer seeking a second term on the board.

Outing mit 73... Barry Manilow spricht über sein Schwulsein

YouTube is launching a streaming TV service Wednesday. It's one of many — Sling, PlayStation Vue and local cable companies among them. But Google-owned YouTube TV offers several features the others don't. They include a cloud-based DVR with no storage limits, allowing users to record as many shows as they want for later playback. Membership also gives access to original series and movies featured on its other subscription streaming service, YouTube Red. And customers can create up to six accounts on one membership, with up to three streams running at once. A subscription costs $...

Helsingborg in southern Sweden is set to become the home of a museum dedicated to some of the biggest flop products of all time, including the Betamax player, the Harley Davidson perfume and an ill-advised "female" pen.

If a prime minister wants to truly unite a nation – one way not to do it is to cook a pizza with spaghetti topping. This seems to be the lesson that New Zealand’s leader, Bill English, can take away after he dabbled in the kitchen and sprinkled his result on social media this week. On Tuesday night English cooked dinner for his family – a 1980s rural Kiwi classic: tinned spaghetti and pineapple pizza. Later, he posted a series of photos of his home-spun efforts on Facebook. The photographs, blurry and un-retouched, caused a culinary uproar on Facebook and Twitter, with some Kiwis declaring they couldn’t vote for a prime minister who so wantonly bastardised Italian cuisine.

DID YOU KNOW THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A REPORTED DEATH LINKED TO THE OVERDOSING OF MARIJUANA?

Adorable CAT Plays with COW

[sensitivefern]

Moses’ serpentlike rod is the Hebrew Caduceus, symbol of the creative power, and wherever it strikes the earth a miracle is wrought. But so was it with Mises, and also Abaris, a high priest of Apollo. According to Pindar, Apollo gave this great one an arrow with which to work miracles. Why do we not believe these stories also? We don’t because we have been taught one is pagan myth, the other ‘the word of God’. Such is the power of priestly diabolism. [...] Because of this ‘revealed truth’ millions believe that Moses divided the Red Sea and led all Israel through it dry-shod. The rationalists doubt but do not deny and so, like Strabo, they try to explain it on natural grounds. The name is wrong, they say; it should be the Reed Sea, a shallow, swampy place much farther north. This makes a physical crossing possible and so literalism is satisfied.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

...and what he was trying to do in the Song of Myself and the eleven poems of his first edition, was much more eccentric to the modes of any earlier century and puzzled, even when it did not shock, his first readers. Of the twelve poems in this edition, most were as confusing (not to say offensive) to the contemporary critic as the music of Wagner when first played to hearers conditioned by Mozart or Haydn. And since the readers of this edition were most of them professionals, sensitive to form, it may be said that it was probably not the realistic sexuality of I Sing the Body Electric or the egoism of the Song of Myself, but what seemed anarchy in every poem that offended them most. Here was no story like Evangeline, no single emotional pattern like Poe’s, not moral like Emerson’s, no device of the usual sort to secure unity and coherence. Each poem was like a pianist improvising, or a savage chanting his needs and deeds.

[Henry Seidel Canby]

===

Blacks needed a forceful advocate, and one had already materialized.

In March 1916, Marcus Mosiah Garvey arrived from Jamaica. Two years earlier, he had founded a black self-help group, the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Inspired by Booker T. Washington... Garvey nonetheless differed markedly from him in ideology and in style. Washington’s earlier black critics pushed for social equality and integration, the the flamboyant Garvey said: turn your back on the white community, build up your own businesses, keep to yourself, return to your African roots, return to AFrica if necessary, and free your homeland.

[1920]

===

Aldous Huxley... in those days, was known only as the grandson of... Thomas Henry, one of my heroes. My first contact with him came in 1919, when he reviewed Prejudices: First Series in the London Athenaeum... [...] In 1926 he went to the Far East, and on his return home by way of the United States I saw him in New York. He turned out to be an immensely tall and spare fellow, looking startlingly like his distinguished grandfather. He has suffered some injury to his eyes and was forced to use glasses so powerful that they magnified his eyes to the unearthly diameter of those of Ring W. Lardner. Our meeting was at Moneta’s restaurant in Mulberry Street, and we got down a hearty dinner and heavy rations of Moneta’s excellent bootleg Italian wine.

That, unhappily, was my only meeting with him, though in the late 30’s he moved to the United States. He settled in Southern California, and was presently showing one of the characteristic stigmata of the literati of that great state. That is to say, he was writing a book whooping up one of its innumerable resident quacks. This quack offered a method of curing damaged eyes by means of exercise, and Huxley not only professed to have been benefitted by it, but became an ardent propagandist for it. His book on the subject, The Art of Seeing, was published in 1942. I never read it, for the thought of a grandson of old Thomas Henry succumbing to a medical charlatan was too much to be borne.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

When you have horses it is good to carry a few—a very few—canned goods... On a walking trip, however, the affair is different. You can take canned goods, if you want to. But their transportation would require another Indian; another Indian means more grub and more equipment; and so at the last you find yourself at the head of an unwieldy caravan. You find it much pleasanter to cut the canned goods, and to strike out with a single companion.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

❚Broth-Loving Hipsters Are Pushing Up The Price Of Bones

Antivaxers marched on Washington last week. It was less than impressive.

Eating Marmite could have a positive impact on brain activity, a new study has suggested. Researchers at the University of York say they have identified a potential link between consuming Marmite and the apparent increase of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) - a chemical messenger associated with healthy brain function.

Kendall Jenner's Pepsi ad criticized for co-opting protest movements for profit The commercial, in which the reality TV star uses a sugary beverage to soothe tension between protesters and police, is going vi...

[sensitivefern]

...TR’s Progressive Party angrily spurned Southern blacks. ‘The Progressive party in the South’, Roosevelt announced, ‘should be a white party with such colored members as the whites found acceptable’.

Nor could blacks count on the even farther-left. In March 1912, Socialist leader Kate Richards O’Hare published a particularly virulent pro-segregation article in an official party publication. It asked:

What is the solution of the race question? There can be but one. Segregation... Let us give the blacks one section in the country where every condition is best fitted for them.

[...] Franklin Roosevelt’s Navy allowed blacks, but only for the dirtiest, most menial of tasks. Not a single black man served in his Marine Corps.

Nonetheless, blacks responded admirably. They did not protest the war. They registered for the draft. They invested heavily in war bonds. They fought bravely.

And they were rewarded with unprecedented violence.

[1920: The Year of the Six Presidents]

===

The earlier Bibles say that Moses, when he came down from the mount, had horns on his head – as Michelangelo portrays him. The authors of the King James Version... made it read ‘the skin of his face shone’, thus hiding the key to Moses... Modern scholars believe it should read rays rather than horns, but that is because they don’t know Moses. It is also why they can’t translate properly. [...] Horns are mythological accessories, and in no sense peculiar to the Hebrew Moses. Many mythical beings had them, among which was Bacchus, called by some ‘the horned child’, and by others, ‘Zagreus son of Zeus’... [...] Moses is the earth, the horned beast of Revelation; he is Aries, the genetic Ram; he is Pan, the goatlike Aries on earth; he is Phallus Erectus, or the serpentine force thereof in Evolution. Thus the Vulgate is right and the rest are wrong. As one saved from water, Moses is what was saved after the Deluge. As such he is identical with the slimy dragon that Apollo discovered after the flood dried up. And this dragon is the devil of scripture, and its devil and its Moses are one. Both have horns and this is what the key word horns is trying to tell us.

[Deceptions and Myths of the Bible]

===

Thereafter the Algonquin’s chief glory was its Round Table, first set up in 1919. The members of this Round Table were all literati of the third, fourth and fifth rate – for example, Alexander Woollcott, Frank Sullivan, Howard Dietz, Heywood Broun, Donald Ogden Stewart, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Robert Sherwood, John V. A. Weaver, Franklin P. Adams and Deems Taylor – but they whooped each other up so diligently that they got a great deal of attention in the newspapers, and so passed among the innocent as the stars of a new Mermaid Tavern or Kit Kat Club.

[H.L. Mencken]

===

It is quite possible that millet was the first grain to be cultivated during the Neolithic era, while the first written record goes back to China at about 2800 B.C. The Sumerians, the Etruscans and the Romans ate it, and it was grown in Gaul and is still a major crop of the drier areas of India. Possible it comes as a surprise to know that millet has served as an alternate for rice for centuries in northern China, Korea and Japan, and about one third of the propel of the Orient utilize it as an important food source, reaching into the furthest areas of the Himalayas. [...] Millet is one of the most nutritious of grains, easy to digest, and very rich in amino acids, phosphorus and B vitamins, with an iron content that is higher than any grain except for amaranth and quinoa. But we think that its most important claim to fame and the reason it should be looked at most carefully is that it is one of the most outstanding alkaline foods in the world...

[The Versatile Grain and the Elegant Bean]

===

The Philosophy of Duffle So you take it, and keep on taking it, and once in a great while you use it. Then some day you wake up to two more bits of camp philosophy which you formulate to yourself about as follows: An article must pay in convenience or comfort for the trouble of its transportation; and Substitution, even imperfect, is better than the carrying of special conveniences. Then he hurls said Patent Dingbat into the nearest pool.

That hits directly at the weak point of the sporting catalogues. Every once in a while an enthusiast writes me of some new and handy kink he is ready to swear by. It is indeed handy; and if one could pluck it from the nearest bush when occasion for its use arose, it would be a joy and a delight. But carrying it four hundred miles to that occasion for its use is a very different matter. The sporting catalogues are full of very handy kinks. They are good to fool with and think about, and plan over in the off season; but when you pack your duffle bag you'd better put them on a shelf.

[Stewart Edward White, Camp and Trail]

===

❚On September 3, 2012, a chimp on the International Space Station escaped from his research facility and seized control of the $100 billion spacecraft. Here are the six animals NASA has since launched into space in an attempt to kill the chimp.

Loyal Dog Waits 2 Full Hours Before Consuming Dead Owner’s Face

Rep. Steve King (R-KKK) Introduces Bill To Ban All Immigrants

Can pure maple syrup help reduce chronic inflammation?

Cat loves its new toy: A baby in a bouncy swing

Noted medical expert Pat Robertson is once again giving horrible advice to his viewers, telling a woman with multiple sclerosis that there is a “spiritual dimension” to her disease and that demons need to be “cast out” of her in order to cure it.