The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
That story about the Cerne Abbas Giant was fascinating to me. The methods of dating it, the mysteries surrounding it and the ties to Cromwell and Charles I. I have a theory or two about how such a giant thing could be constructed. Maybe since the ancient peoples looked at the night sky and imagined large constellations, they had the ability to think spatially in a way that we have lost. Also, perhaps they put down rocks or sticks first, checking them by going over to the other hill, before they started digging and filling in with limestone chalk.
I've started watching BBC's Farm series on YouTube and it is amazing how many ways the people used the limestone. The episode on the Edwardian Farm has three people living for a year and working a farm of that period using the ways of the times. Creating the quicklime to treat the acidic soil was backbreaking and dangerous work.
A pastoral note in the Cerne article was about Virginia and Vivien Vale, a couple who wrote a book about the parish and a brewery at the foot of a pasture that produces an amber beer infused with watercress grown by monks of the abbey and a darker beer called Mrs. Vale's Ale. I want to go there on my next visit to the isles!
Surprise! In that same issue (May 24) there is a poem called "limestone". I often find themes that repeat in an issue like that.
There was also an interesting article about Francis Bacon, the British painter of grotesque figures and body parts, not the 16th century Lord Chancellor of England and philosopher. Bacon said he wanted his paintings to strike the viewer's nervous system, to "unlock the valves of feeling," to pierce them and make them bleed. Strange that he was so successful with work that you'd never hang on your wall, unless you lived in Transylvania.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on May 30, 2021, 06:16:30 pm ---I've started watching BBC's Farm series on YouTube and it is amazing how many ways the people used the limestone. The episode on the Edwardian Farm has three people living for a year and working a farm of that period using the ways of the times. Creating the quicklime to treat the acidic soil was backbreaking and dangerous work.
--- End quote ---
Many years ago our own PBS did something similar. They called the series "[Something} House," and I remember they did several different "houses." The only one I watched was "Colonial House." I felt the production values were very high; the staff from Plimoth Plantation, the reproduction Pilgrim settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts, created a small 17th-century community for the series. However, I found it disappointing because it seemed to deal more with the relationships among the people involved and less with them learning to live in a 17th-century colony.
Front-Ranger:
I read a funny "Shouts & Murmurs"! It was in the April 19 issue: "The FIrst Chapter of My Proposed Novel" by Jack Handey. In several places, particularly near the end, I laughed out loud!
There were several other good articles in that issue, particularly, as Jeff pointed out, "Band of Brothers." For some reason, the article on emotional intelligence didn't appeal to me. I guess I decided, along with the author Merve Emre, that it was mostly a fad of the late 1990s.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 05, 2021, 07:00:30 pm ---I read a funny "Shouts & Murmurs"! It was in the April 19 issue: "The FIrst Chapter of My Proposed Novel" by Jack Handey. In several places, particularly near the end, I laughed out loud!
--- End quote ---
Among their regulars, Jack Handey is one of the few who's reliably funny.
I haven't seen the IE piece yet, but I'll take a look. I didn't realize it was considered a fad. My son was arguing just last week that it wasn't a real thing. Maybe he was right! :o :laugh:
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 07, 2021, 11:46:43 am ---I haven't seen the IE piece yet, but I'll take a look. I didn't realize it was considered a fad. My son was arguing just last week that it wasn't a real thing. Maybe he was right! :o :laugh:
--- End quote ---
That seems to be the opinion of the author, too.
I'm going through spring New Yorkers and purging them. This was a good article in the March 8 issue on the global fish industry:
The Smell of Money
It was shocking to me that thousands of tons of fish in Africa are made into a fish meal that is exported all over to feed farmed fish, including to China where it is fed to tilapia that are exported all over. And the tilapia are herbivores!
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