PEREGRINE PULP

It was just one more shocking revelation exposing my total ignorance of history and human behaviour. But it seemed like too much of an aside at the time I was writing my last book, and I’d already taken so very many provocative tangents. So I made no mention of it. CHATHAM When I was writing my book about this town I went looking for some of the street names I knew nothing about. I used to live on Chatham Street but couldn’t recall coming across a Chatham in my readings. The

I take in a lot of food-related content. This week I was just watching a BBC documentary from 1957 about French peasants working as travelling salesmen across the Channel in the UK. Their wares? Onions. Men would leave their families in Roscoff , a commune in the Finistère département of Brittany, on the north end of the most westerly corner of Franc, and travel across to Portsmouth in ships carrying hundreds of tonnes of copper and rose Oignon de Roscoff . There they would

John W. Trinkaus (not to be confused with John P. Trinkaus, the embryologist) is a hero of mine. Born in 1925, Trinkaus served in the US Air Force during WWII, studied electrical engineering after the war, and then worked as an engineer for a few decades. With graduate degrees related to engineering and management, he eventually took up a professorship at a CUNY's Baruch College business school and would come to be a Professor Emeritus and the school's dean. Trinkaus also c

Because of light pollution, many birds around the globe sing almost an hour longer today than historically or those birds who reside in more remote areas. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv9472 Hunted to near extinction, since the 1980s green sea turtles were listed as 'endangered.' Decades of sustained conservation has just resulted in their status being lifted to 'least concern'. https://www.popsci.com/environment/green-sea-turtles-not-endangered The volume of

There are many crosswalks in this town. Some of them are extra-special, truly un-pedestrian, crossings, if you will. Like most others, these crosswalks have zebra stripes in the road and the signage you would expect. Here these extra-special variety, found in several different neighbourhoods of the city, have a little more signage than usual (or necessary) as well, with one sign on each side of the street facing in both directions and an additional pair of double-sized signs

I never knew anything at all about Halloween, other than the fact that folks in different places celebrate differently or not at all. The details are pretty interesting. The pagan festival of Samhain (pronounced SAH-win ) originated with the Celts of ancient Britain and Ireland. Samhain was the festival marking the end of harvest time and the beginning of winter. Halfway between autumn equinox and the winter solstice, marking a transition between the lighter half of the year

I was just listening to a jolly gaggle of middle-aged Irishfolk. As happens four pints in, they started talking about their recent doctor visits. With a couple of males involved, the conversation inevitably turned to the digital rectal exam. One declared he'd never had the procedure done and had no interest in ever having one. All the others barked and howled, exclaiming he was foolish at best and what he really needed to do was have his head checked. I couldn't believe all t

You know this phenomenon, this optical illusion, that occurs when you stare too long at something and fatigue your photoreceptors? When you close your eyes you get what is called "retinal inertia", where those burned out receptors don't stop responding even in the absence of light. What you see then, with your eyes shut, is a "negative afterimage" that is the inverse of the light intensity and colours you were just looking at with your eyes open. Yeah. Now imagine that but wi

Comedian Dusty Slay ("Okay. We're havin' a good time.") tells a story about attempting to join the army. The whole thing is a much longer story about how he reasoned that there was no chance America would be involved in a major conflict before he could get some training and life skills, do some travelling, put in time as a cook, and to save some money to pay for culinary school and maybe build a restaurant when he gets out -- and that he should have been sent to basic trainin

LIVING AND A LIVING Part of what makes this place so great, aside from the natural beauty and great climate, is that it’s almost...

Pet rabbits, primarily domesticated European rabbits ( Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus ), had been abandoned on the local university...

EARLIEST VISITS? Almost eight centuries after Norse arrival in the east and two-and-a-half centuries after the start of the Columbian...

OKAY I’m a fan of etymology and semantics and, really, everything to do with language; still, somehow I never gave much thought to the...

Much is being said about this US election and the folks coming to power. The only thing worth noting that I can spot, and something mostly ignored from what I can tell, is that many key Republicans and even lower level appointees are actually lifelong Democrats. Even their key supporters and consultants are not Conservatives but, by almost any metric, actually Liberals. Though I've seen and heard of some party flipping over the years, here and there, I don't think there has e

So many such odd things these days. So many such things and so very odd that it’s hard to differentiate what is normal and what is perfectly mad. While packing food home from the market yesterday I passed a small house with a crow on its front door. Dead, clearly, crucified-like, the bird had nails, clearly seen at a distance, through its upper arms. The crow looked fresh, with all its feathers clean, intact, and in place. It was as though it was put there with care — rather

CANDISS:  But you could be setting fire to things while adding fuel. BARTHALAHMEU:  What do you mean? C:  Well, you have no information....

NOAH: Someone was telling me how the Gospel of Mark, according to Mark, St. Mark the Evangelist, was originally transmitted by itinerant...

I don’t even know how you would explain to future generations what has taken place over the last decade. So much context is needed just...