carlina acaulis

Taking a walk through the woods, I noticed in a few select spots, along the verge of the path and outside the places dappled by shadow a sort of silvery thistle that while sticking me as somehow very familiar seemed still an exotic treat. Afterwards I learned that these flowers are indeed called a silver thistle (die Silber- oder Rhöndistel being native to Alpine regions and this area), differing from their more common, stalked relatives due to having no stem (a-caulis), an incidence of what’s called inflorescence where the blossom comes directly out of the leaves.
Wanting to protect its relatively exposed pollen supply safe until a bee or butterfly comes along, the thistle will close up the flower presaging rain showers as was a traditional way of forecasting the weather—especially as the plant is likely to flower in August through September. The plant, as with other thistle varieties, was important for folk medicine for its recognised antimicrobial and diuretic properties, as well as being edible—the thistle being the undomesticated version of the artichoke.
I also realised where the image of the flower came from: for years we’ve been using up a particular notepad for shopping and to-do lists whose edges are printed with patterns in Nature, with the silver thistle as one of the examples of precision engineering and design.

horseless carriage

Although very much retold from an America perspective, it was nonetheless interesting to consider the etymological journey we embarked on to get to the colloquial term car (from cart)—automobile, a French convention ultimately with Greek roots, being a technical, industry term (similar to the formal German PKW—Personnen Kraftfahrzeuge) that’s only used in North America. Of the early trade names suggested before reaching a critical mass and adopting a standard name, early media coverage referred to prototypes as the Motorig, Buggyaut, Tonneau, the Diamote and the Mocole—among others.  Be sure to visit Jalopnik at the link above to discover more car-related cul-de-sacs and points-of-departure.

freedom of religion is also freedom from religion

We were a little familiar with the personage of Ingersoll (*1833 - †1899) though the occasional quotation featured on Cynical-C, whose author has happily reconsidered retiring from blogging, but had not invested learning more about the figure, who is regarded as one of the greater orators and politicians of the United States of America during the Golden Age of Free Thought (the freethinking movement that coalesced with the conclusion of the US Civil War in 1865 and lasted until roughly the outbreak of World War I—but did not get the needed extra academic nudge until learning that this day is (among a few other things) the anniversary of Robert Green Ingersoll’s birth.
I wonder what the noted lawyer and politician called “The Great Agnostic” would make of such a day of obligation. Amazingly popular and charismatic as a speaker, despite attacks levied against his character for disdaining organised religion and spirituality that did not compliment scientific inquiry, logic and humanism, audiences would pay the sum of one-dollar entry fees (nominally, around thirty dollars in today’s money but that’s a simplistic comparison considering how far a dollar stretched back then and what else a person could get instead for that admission price) and attended to Ingersoll’s every word. Credited with informing the way we understand the separation of church and state as well as reviving Thomas Payne as an important, foundational figure in socio-political thought, many of Ingersoll’s lectures, whose topics were not limited to disabusing superstition and fealty but also humility, family, universal suffrage, civil rights and Shakespeare, were improvised but many others were committed to print—which one can peruse here in full or, if you’d rather, as a daily digest.

peer of the realm

Marquess of the baronet of Anglesey (Ardalydd Môn), privy counsellor to the courts of Victoria and Edward VII and nicknamed “Toppy,” Henry Cyril Paget (*1875 - †1905) lived a short and by the reckoning of his of his fellow royals a destitute and squandered one. At age twenty-three Paget married his cousin Lilian Chetwynd and the same year came into his title with the death of his father and inherited extensive estates throughout England and Wales. Paget had the chapel of the family’s country seat converted into a one hundred-fifty seat theatre (modelled off the Dresden Opera) and staged everything from elaborate costume dramas to cabaret for invited audiences.
Paget’s plans to tour with his theatre company, already mortgaging some of property to fund the excursion, was a step too far and she had their marriage annulled—though later cared for him at his death in Monaco, bankrupt and suffering from a prolonged illness (he’d always been somewhat restrained by a weak constitution) and possibly eager to win the right to hold onto some of his prized-possessions at Monte Carlo. All of it, the jewels, private custom rail cars for his actors, the clothes, the costumes—even his dogs, were auctioned off. Neither gambling nor lovers seemed to be the cause of Paget’s downfall, however—only a rather innocent though irresponsible propensity for profligacy and performance—also nicknamed the Dancing Marquess, Paget had a signature slinky snake dance that he would do no matter what the occasion, the later which none faulted him for. Even if the obituaries in the newspapers as well as the heir (another cousin) who inherited what was left of the Anglesey lands plus the debt were harsh, that heir ordered destroyed all of Paget’s diaries and correspondence, so we’ll never know if there was more to the story. Whatever the case, the people in his troupe as well as those associated with the family manors genuinely cared for their eccentric lord and patron.