mullets & barry

Although a lot of convenient and flattering myth-making goes into every nation’s founding fable—and America is certainly no exception ranging from the preternatural, the chimerical to Lincoln ate here, the incarnations and the avatars of the so called Continental Colours go through an interesting evolution to arrive at the archetypal flag that’s credited to seamstress Betsy Ross.
Early banners were mostly ravaged Union Jacks set on a barry (striped) background, captured during the US war for independence, cobbled together and something like the modern flag of the state of Hawaii—however, raising these improvised standards led the British to believe that the rebels were surrendering on more than one occasion. Statesman Benjamin Franklin, whom also nominated the turkey as the national bird though the bald eagle was more favoured, suggested the Don’t Tread on Me design but was not deemed dignified enough for the ages. A standised and recognisable symbol had to be decided on. And while it is debatable whether Miss Ross’ contribution to the complete achievement which was conceived by a professional armourer was limited to making the mullets (stars—which were not very popular heraldic devices at the time) five-pointed rather than the six-pointed variety the menfolk in conference believed to be easier to stitch, not being practised in the art apparently, or whether she took further liberties with the design, the national flag did become her exclusive bailiwick, holding a virtual monopoly on its production for the first decade of the fledging republic.

sugarbakers or mostly ghostley

While I fully agree that the world would be a richer place for having a Lego diorama set of the Golden Girls, there’s another television series that I’ve always associated with it, Designing Women—known as Sugarbakers: Mann muss nicht sein auf Deutsch and wasn’t aired until 1993 and for only a short time.
Maybe the show’s on my mind as we’re going to be flying into Atlanta soon, and though the sitcom-scenes are not a foremost connection, there was an element of Southernness portrayed and discussed that was not addressed elsewhere. And though it’s not quite of the same vintage as Golden Girls, it did have a lot of talent, sharp dialogue and memorable moments, but I certainly don’t feel it’s gotten its due of nostalgia and following.
The show deserves at least a cast of minifigs for the principles and for the recurring characters, like Suzanne’s housekeeper Consuela—who was never on camera expect when Anthony Bouvier in drag pretended to be her in order to take a citizenship test and avoid deportation, Aunt Bernice (Alice Ghostley), Mark Twain (Hal Holbrook) or maybe even Raydon Simpson, the relentless auditor that went after the Sugarbaker sisters for tax-evasion after Suzanne’s personal accountant, Reggie Mac Dawson, absconded with her funds, and tried to make it up to her with a fairy-tale princess parade with circus elephants. It would be fun to be able to recreate these scenes as well.

five-by-five

torsion: lovely mesmerizing animations from Big Blue Boo

menagerie: humourous dialectic creating a medieval bestiary

reaction faces: British Library exhibits Sino-Japanese war prints

neologism: a look at some of the unique vocabulary of Indian English

which anyone could whip up on a rainy day: nice remembrance of the biographical cookbook of Alice B. Toklas 

non-canon or occupational-hazard

Not until the year 1159 did the Papacy claim canonisation as its exclusive bailiwick and other bishops, besides the one of Rome, could bestow sainthood on individuals.

The practise of undermining papal authority was not widespread and the Church did not revoke any previous venerations, but the elevation of Saint Walter of Pontoise, a reluctant and rebellious abbot of a Parisian suburb by another unruly archbishop, Hugh of Amiens, struck the pope at the time, Adrian IV, the only English pope as something so improper—after all Walter had abandoned his post several times and tried to flee responsibility, being the whole system to be too corrupted to discipline and founding his own rebel monastery, and the Archbishop of Rouen had after all only made the nomination out of obstinacy, decreed that only the person of the pope could execute the process. Adrian also became known as an apostle to Norway and Sweden with his early missionary work, supported a second wave of the Norman invasion to pacify monastic Ireland and align it with the Church in Rome, and was also to excommunicate Frederich Barbarossa, over his disputed territories in Sicily, but the Pope choked on a fly in his wine before this could be arranged. Disinclined old St. Walter, whose feast day is celebrated 8 April, who caused all this controversy, is the patron of vintners, inmates and prisoners of war and the saint to call upon in duress over job-related stress—Walter having apparently suffered from burnout syndrome himself.

spermaceti

Reflecting on all the terror and ravages of petroleum and how we’d all like to make do with less providing that the industry take the commanding lead, I do suppose fossil-fuels are a better alternative than what sustained humans through the period of mechanisation and urbanisation, whale oil. Before advent of kerosene and the harnessing of vegetable oils, whale oil provided illumination in oil lamps and was a staple in cooking and the product of the waxworks organ in the heads of whales was used for candles and cosmetics. The animals were nearly hunted to extinction until substitute products became cheaper to obtain. And although the legacy of petroleum production and the rampant expansion it has enable probably will cast a longer shadow, at least the inhumanity with the slaughter has relented. We are still jerks but maybe a little more civilised about it.

two left feet but oh so sweet

H and I will be detouring in America very soon and are very excited to visit my family in Georgia. It’s been far too long, and it is going to be a real treat and surely some culture-shock for the both of us too. PfRC will be on hiatus but please visit our friends over at the Smörgåsblog and stay-tuned to our little travel blog for further adventures. Georgia named her, Georgia claimed her.

société de pétrochimie

As the giants of the petroleum industry—and there be only giants these days, are set to devour one another—this internecine struggle couched in the usual regional conflicts but probably more owing to plummeting oil prices and potential for profit, I wondered where this industry’s and culture’s roots lie.  As recently as the 1970s, I found, before the series of mergers that created Big Oil—too big to fail and top of the food-chain, there was still a remnant of the world’s first petrochemical concern.
Though oil has become inextricably associated with the Middle East, with a spate of other contenders for seconds and for most of the modern history that this commodity has fuelled and lubricated, European deposits were acknowledged to be primarily in the Carpathian planes that spreads from present-day Poland in the west and Ukraine in the east, the discovery as it were and recognition as a valuable commodity can be more or less credited to the Alsatian enterprise, Antar, originally incorporated in 1745. The French interpreter to their ambassadorial mission to Switzerland, a man called Louis Pierre Ancillon de la Sablonnière, was exposed to a small pitch-mining operation near Neuchâtel and learnt of a similar natural bitumen spring on the French-German border, near his homeland. Sablonnière bought the estate with its dirty brown streams. Early uses for this substance included pavement, water-proofing ships’ hulls and sewer-systems—later in the development of photography and synthetic dyes but evidence of its use and understanding reaches far back to the practise of mummification in Ancient Egypt and the mysterious formula for Greek fire.  Centuries passed before the refining process was advanced enough to harness the energy latent in petroleum, but progress marches onwards and the belief that enthralled certain individuals for the tar-pits never faltered. Sablonnière began prospecting around his new far and sold stocks to support his venture.  The name Antar was a much later addition to the original charter, coming in the aftermath of World War I and the rise of the automobile, with the company specialising in petroleum and motor oils, opting to drop its old identity named after the commune where the first mine was located.
Antar may get its name from the pre-Islamic Arab hero and chanticleer Antarah ibn Shaddad (The sons of the prophet were valiant and bold, and quite unaccustomed to fear, but of all the most reckless, or so I am told, was Abdul Abulbul Amir) whose memory was popularised at the time with a symphony by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov.  I would have guess the super-giant star Antares (meaning equal-to-Mars due to its relative brightness and reddish hue) but the celestial body is named for the poet too.  It is also interesting to note how the logo evolved from something generically heraldic that could represent anything but in fact is not a device associated with anything at all to a little mascot who is either supposed to be a Gaulish warrior or one of our old friends, the long-haired, blond Merovingians.  Moreover, the family that traditionally keeps the keys to the Church of the Nativity since centuries are held to be of the extraction of the clan of Antarah himself.  These connections, however rarefied, are much finer things I think than some leviathan of Exxon-Mobil-Esso-Shell-Fina-Total-Total-BP.