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From the desk of NPR’s Photo Stories comes this review and curation of a recently published portfolio of four decades of the evocative photography of beachcombing Harry Gruyaert. His compositions frame seaside tableaux from his native Belgium, France, Ireland and dozens of other places and are collected in the new anthology Edges, referencing that liminal divide between shore and sea. Many more postcards from ocean-front holidays at the link above.

where we go one we go all

Via two of our favourite internet caretakers, Miss Cellania and Everlasting Blört, we are reminded that there’s not much new under the sun—that is, nothing that’s not referencing Poe’s Law—with this vintage bit of quackery that intersects with the cult of disinformation and conspiracy theories in general.

6x6

cassandra drops into verse: a thoroughgoing appreciation of Miss Dorothy Parker (*1893 – †1967)

jazz pigeon: from the same creative studio that asked “Are you tired of being a bird?”—via the Link Pack of Swiss Miss

going postal: the United States may soon see the return of post office offering financial services—see previously

it’s not the heat but the humidity: meta-study suggests that dry air may help the corona virus propagate

the gosling effect: another example of machine pareidolia, wherein a computer detects the Canadian actor’s face in a fold of a curtain—like seeing Jesus in a burrito

susan b. anthony: champion for women’s suffrage rejects Trump’s offer of a pardon for her arrest and fine in 1872 for voting illegally

there is more than one way to burn a book—and the world is full of people running about with lit matches

Born on this day in 1920, with his family moving to Hollywood during his formative adolescent years—albeit personally and professionally, all were struggling with the Depression, Ray Bradbury (†2012, see previously this animated interview from 1972) with such seminal works as The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes and Fahrenheit 451 and numerous other short stories is seen as being instrumental in bringing science fiction and science fantasy into mainstream entertainment. Experimenting with writing himself beginning at age eleven, his first paid work came at fourteen from comedian George Burns for a joke Bradbury had submitted for the variety programme he co-hosted, The Burns and Allen Show.

bredlik

As our artificial intelligencer Janelle Shane (previously) recalls to mind, circa 2016 there was a genre of verse introduced by Sam Garland on observing a cow licking loaves of bread in an unattended bakery and framing the poem from the frame of said cow that enjoyed a memetic moment:

my name is Cow,
and wen its nite,
or wen the moon is shiyning brite,
and all the men haf gon to bed – I stay up late.
I lik the bred.

We had forgotten but just as well as Shane was waiting for the internet attention the style was getting had virtually faded away before training her neural network on the subject to see what it would expound on in the same meter (and the same non-standard Middle English spelling) without undue outside influence. Seeding it with three word prompts (e.g., cow, lick, bread), the neural network created some noble rhymes.

saint guinefort

Venerated on this day and celebrated since the thirteenth century until the 1930s despite multiple and vehement prohibitions by the Church, this holiday marks our third recent iteration of dog-related saints (see previously here and here), albeit this one is our first actual canine.
The faithful greyhound of a knight living in the Dombes near Lyon, the knight left his infant son in Guinefort’s care one day when he needed to go on a hunting expedition. Of course the dog was a good and capable baby-sitter but there was a tragic misunderstanding: like the tale The Brahmin and the Mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the knight returned to find the baby missing and Guinefort with bloody jaws. Assuming the worse, the knight smote Guinefort, realising only too late that the dog had saved the child, taking him to a secure spot and killed a viper. To make amends for their error, they interred Guinefort in a well and transformed it into a shire, a grotto with a grove of trees. Several miraculous interventions that saved infants and small children from harm are attributed to Guinefort and new parents often brought their children to be blessed at the well.

弁当

Present /&/ Correct showcases a nice collection of vintage ekiben wrappers—a portmanteau of the words for railway and bento boxed meals (駅弁).
The latter came from a Chinese term meaning convenience and around since at least the thirteenth century. Though there was a decline in quality and artfulness of these prepared snacks for train passengers with quicker journeys and the increased popularity of flying, ekiban are seeing a revival as on onboard food option and have since been at least offered as take-away fare inside stations, department stores and airports. Given this longevity (prior to the age of transporation), these boxes are bearers of a lot of culture, expectations and performance and several other specialty types have been developed, including shidashi—a catered meal ate a social occasion like a wedding or a funeral, kyaraben—a bento meant to resemble a favourite cartoon character, and a shikaeshiben (仕返し弁)—that is, a revenge bento, where the preparer uses the boxed lunch to get back at the recipient by writing confessions or insults in the food or by making it inedible or possibly poisoned.

castagno dei cento cavalli

In one of the first official acts recognising and treasuring the environment, the Royal Court of Sicilian Heritage (Tribunale dell’Ordine del Real Patrimonio di Sicilia) inscribed the Hundred Horse Chestnut into rolls of protected property on this day in 1745.
The four-thousand-year old tree on the eastern slopes of Mount Etna (perhaps owing its longevity to rich volcanic soil—all the more so because of its precarious location) is believed to be the oldest in existence. Recorded as having the greatest girth—having split into a grove multiple trunks above ground, the tree received its name after local lore relating that when Queen Juana I of Castilla (called La Loca) passed through with her large entourage of knights, the entire company was able to shelter under its boughs during a thunderstorm. This venerable tree is a sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), whereas a horse chestnut is a close-cousin.