quacksalver and cumberworld

Though now more generalised to indicate an obsequious underling or someone who lavishes flattery unwarranted, we learn that etymologically the noun and adjective toady is a shortening of the job of the toad-eater—that is, the assistant (or supposed volunteer from the gathered crowd) to a quack doctor, a mountebank from the Italian montambanco for mounted-on-a-bench and positioned to hawk his tonics and curatives engaged to performatively eat a toad, which many considered to be poisonous at the time. Hamming it up and on the verge of death, the doctor would administer his potion thus restoring the patient. There’s a whole bevy of useful vocabulary terms for the insufferable below from Merriam-Webster (see previously)—though we agree that to call someone the above cumberworld is a bit too harsh to revive for general use and should really reserve it for the worst of us.

nyctinasty

Having unfortunately nothing to do with the tenacity of New Yorkers, the above vocabulary word stems from the Greek νυκτ-, nùx for night and the rhythmic, natic movements (see also) that some plants make in response to stimulus—generally light—and is colloquially referred to as plant sleeping. Most apparent in flowers closing at dusk, only a few species have the ability to reopen and fold their petals (like the pictured red tulip) and ones (the majority) that don’t demonstrate nyctinasty are called sleepless.

i’ll have what she’s having

Waxing nostalgic for the days when we could eat out, Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a series of phrases wait staff may have once (and will have to contend with again, God willing) bemoaned over but are now missing their guests presented on vintage pre-printed dining ledgers.  Click through to check out more graphically enhanced ephemera from Laundry Room Studios.  What familiar inanities and declarations from the before times are you missing right now?

hocus potus

Just as the Twitterati has formed broad cliques reflective of larger social orders, WitchTok—the portmanteau of TikTok for practitioners of hexes and witchcraft—is a real and popular phenomenon reportedly and is being credited by some with infecting Trump with COVID-19.

While we don’t think that’s how magic works, we’ll certainly let them cast their spell and encourage more, seeing that that coven that claimed to curse Trump the night of the inauguration might need to check their work. Oh yes, and please vote—unless you want more of over-reliance on homeopathy essential oils and accusing ones neighbour of suffering a witch to live out of deep desperation as ones healthcare and jobs disappear.

défilé de mode

The ever stunning Nag on the Lake refers us to a creative catwalk crafted with the help of Jim Henson’s muppet workshop as solution for showcasing a fashion house’s spring-summer line. Creative director of Moschino scaled down (see also, last link in the collection) not the production or fanfare but rather the models and audience—of noted industry fashionistas—displaying the attire on marionettes.

abscission

Rather taken with the idea of capturing fall leaves in transition ourselves, we were pleased to learn that artist Josef Albers (see previously) also—circa 1940—conducted his own foliage studies and in part out of necessity, since leaves and trees were in abundance but paper less so, encouraged his students at Black Mountain College and Yale to appreciate the beauty of the changing palette and constant rhythm of the seasons.  We ought to mount some samples on construction paper and see what sort patterns emerge.

sing along with khrushchov

With a rather engrossing follow-up to an earlier mention of a rare 1962 volume by Ilona Fabian with illustrations by Victor Vashi, the prolific Hungarian artist who cartooned his way through Nazi and Soviet occupation, Weird Universe shares this coloring book that doesn’t bother mincing words or diplomatic happy talk in framing contemporary geopolitics.

A reader of the blog had reached out with a digitalised copy (find a complete PDF at the site) of this imagined correspondence between “Nyetochka”—Khrushchev’s granddaughter and Caroline Kennedy about the foibles of her extended family with “Uncle Fidel,” “Uncle Nehru” and “Uncle Tito” and those written out of the will, and saved it from oblivion. The Soviet leader is depicted shod with just one shoe throughout in reference to his shoe pounding spectacle at the United Nations. Vashi’s other work from this period, the 1967 retrospective published on the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Red Primer for Children and Diplomats, is more well-known.

unorthodox

Being the load-bearing day it already is with the celebration of indigenous cultures and identity, the Feast for Life (birthday in 1875) of occultist and Thelema founder Aleister Crowley, the start of the first Oktoberfest in 1890—plus Thanksgiving / Action de grâce for our Canadian friends this year, this date also is observed as Freethought Day, held on the anniversary when colonial governor of Massachusetts Bay William Phips (*1651 – †1695) was moved to recant and contact the privy council of William and Mary to recommend that they disband the witch tribunal that Phips himself had established in order bring legitimacy to a process that was widely seen for the petty court of retributions that it was by finding “spectral evidence” inadmissible.

Despite his good intentions, Phips’ reforms came up short and the witch trials were effectively ended in North America where they had lingered longer than in Europe. Humanist, secularists and freethinkers eschew heterodoxy and prescriptive rather than descriptive world-views and organisers hope to portray atheists and the non-aligned as just the same as everyone else (a concept that is glaring absent in politics) and induct honorary figures as examples of those that embody autonomy and reason, whose ranks include Thomas Paine, Clarence Darrow, Mark Twain, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hypatia, Fredrick Douglas and George Orwell.