Mafra Palace Library

Mafra Palace Library, Portugal

From The Telegraph:

Since its opening in 1771, the Mafra Palace Library has been home to a colony of tiny bats; they roost behind the cases in winter, and in the orchard outside in the summer, swooping in during the night to eat insects which would otherwise damage the books.

More about the library and the colonial history behind its creation under the cut.

Torrential rain; hay bale theft; deer teeth dentures

The Canadian news continues to be really odd.  I have no idea if this is normal, since I didn't pay attention to it for nearly a decade, and before that I just read one local newspaper.  That was before I had internet, so I didn't see anywhere near as much news.  A lot of the Canadian news is boring or sad, but some of it is just plain weird. 

There was a really unusual windstorm (for August) in southern BC, centred on Vancouver and starting on Saturday afternoon.  We just caught the edge of it, but there were high winds, trees whipping, rain and hail pelting down, constant power flickering.  It hadn't rained in months, so the ground was really dry and couldn't absorb all that water.  The trees are brittle from drought and covered in leaves which make them act like sails, so there are a lot of downed trees, causing power outages, blocking streets, and damaging vehicles and houses.

It wasn't a big problem here, but there was flooding elsewhere, and 710,000 people in Vancouver were without power for at least a day.  Some of them are still without power, three days later.  It's not that cold, but they haven't been able to cook, or flush the toilet, or possibly run water at all for three days.  BC Hydro is saying that it's the single largest power outage event in their history.

Hundreds of trees were uprooted during Saturday's windstorm, including this one that lifted a Vancouver sidewalk. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

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Lots of people were posting pics of the damage on Twitter.

One woman in Vancouver was hit by a tree while out walking with her daughter and is in hospital with life-threatening injuries.

At least two people were killed in Washington State. One man was driving when a tree came crashing down on top of his car. A 10-year-old girl was playing outside at a friend's house when she was struck and killed by a fallen tree branch.

Vancouver's Stanley Park was closed to the public. The east side of the park has since been reopened as crews work to clear the remaining trees and debris caused by the storm.

A number of ferry crossings were cancelled or delayed due to rough seas, and the Vancouver SkyTrain was temporarily delayed after a tree fell across the tracks, smashing the front of an oncoming train. (Weather Network)

We got more rain in four days than we have the whole summer and the winds were up to 90km/hr.  While it's slowed down, it's still raining and it's expected to keep raining.  I'm used to it raining only once or twice a year in January, so this much rain and wind and cold weather in August and early September is pretty strange to me.  It was just starting to be warm for a little while, and now it's winter again.  Thanks, Canada.

The hay bale theft and deer teeth dentures stories are under the cut.

A Woman’s Wisdom: Commentary

“So, women’s tales…” OPNO said.

“Ladies are not allowed to talk to each other, they’ll get ideas,” I said.

“This is a terrible story,” she said.

“You can tell it’s being told by men.”

I had thought, before I finished reading the last paragraph, that the story would end with them all living together and the men the women had talked to finding wives to live with them as well and so they would all have other people to talk to, especially the women, who weren’t allowed to go out, but they would not have too many people to handle.  That would be a reasonable solution.

But no.  The husbands got even more jealous and went even farther in isolating their wives and did not learn from their mistakes.  The message of the story is not ‘too much solitude and too much togetherness cause trouble, so find a middle ground,’ as I thought it would be; rather, it’s ‘jealous, controlling men will try to solve their relationship problems by becoming more controlling and will blame everyone but themselves when it doesn’t work.’

OPNO has a relative who divorced five wives for trivial things like singing once while they ironed and others could hear, and finally nobody would marry their daughters to him.  I don’t know if he learned and took responsibility for his behaviour, but going on personal experience, I doubt it.  I have been the woman in relationships with men who isolated me and tried to prevent me from talking to anyone, and they still blame those untrustworthy women for all their problems and also for not dating them now.

I really hope this is being told by men as a cautionary tale, but given that it had a happy ending and the sort of ending that is seen as normal by a lot of people (excepting the castle), I rather doubt it.

Roses

I suddenly have a craving for pink roses, I have no idea why.  Just pink ones, no other colour will do.  It's not true that I've always loved roses, it just came on suddenly this week.  They're nice enough flowers but that's all I usually feel for them.

Rosa centifolia from Les Roses (1817) (Country Garden Roses)

My grandmother did love roses and worked hard at growing them in a climate that was not really suitable for them. 

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

 - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

I suppose there is a narrative in which I do love roses and always have, but it's a story someone else might tell about me, not one I would say is true of myself:  When I was a little kid, my grandmother had a cabbage rose bush. 

Unidentified pink cabbage rose (source).

I remember scooping petals up off the lawn and putting them in a shoebox.  I think I also put my grama's Siamese cat in the box and then piled rose petals on top - picture the cat hunkering down like grumpy cat.  I filled my orange plastic pumpkin from Halloween which I used as a handbag with petals and took them home, spending the long car trip up the island ruffling the petals and putting my face into the pumpkin to smell them. 

“But he who dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose.”

― Anne Bronte

David Austin rose 'Spirit of Freedom' (source)

I was five or six and roses didn't grow where we lived.  It was too cold and wet.  Petunias didn't grow there either, they melted.  Not much besides fir trees and ferns grew.  Maybe that's why I love tropical plants and now suddenly roses so much - as much as it's possible to find a reason. 

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”

― H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques  

(source)

My grandmother had a huge stack of Herb Digest or something like that which I read through in her bathroom when I was in elementary school.  I read about monastery gardens and medieval herbal medicine and nuns.  I tried making rosary beads - despite not being Christian.  I was a complete heathen, never baptised or christened or confirmed or churched, but I have always liked ritual.  The burgundy and green carpets and incense and calligraphy and salaah five times a day and tasbeeh are some of the things I like about being Muslim, although they're trappings.  They're not the heart of the religion.

I chopped up rose petals and mixed them into a flour dough and rolled them into balls and painstakingly poked holes through them and laid them in the weak summer sun and turned them several times a day.  I eventually ended up with a string of crude musty-smelling brown beads.  I sometimes think about trying to do that again, now that I'm not ten years old and could produce something of better quality, if I had rose petals.

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? 

Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet.  

Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air.  

Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”

― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Iskwew's Images

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it live.

The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly

When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:

But, for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth. 

 - Shakespeare's Sonnet 54

source

 I don't even like the roses that much in person, and I wouldn't want to have to grow them, but I like the idea of them and I like looking at pictures of them.

Merchant, keep your attar of roses,
your ambers, your oud,
your myrrh and sandalwood. I need
nothing but this dust
palmed in my hand’s cup
like a coin, like a mustard seed,
like a rusted key.

I need

no more than this, this earth

that isn’t earth, but breath,

the exhalation of a living city, the song

of a flute-boned woman,

air and marrow on her lips.

 - Amal el-Mohtar, 'Song for an Ancient City.'

Elling Woman's Hairstyle

Something interesting I found on the web: a reconstruction of an Iron Age Danish bog mummy's hairstyle. (Link to the page. Not everyone finds photos of mummies as fascinating as I do). She is thought to have been hanged as a sacrifice and then buried in the bog.

I have been trying to imagine sacrificing another human being, or being the sacrifice. My imagination fails me. Sacrificing sheep is difficult enough.

I had some extra time this morning and gave the hairstyle a try. Anyone not that interested in braided hairstyles will find the rest of this extremely boring.

I started a french braid at my brow and picked up sections of hair until just above my ears, then continued it as a plain english braid separate from the rest of my hair until the nape of my neck.

(Elling Woman did not have a french braid, but a plain english braid will not contain my flyaway hair).

I divided the lower part of my hair into three sections and added a section to each strand of the braid at the nape of my neck, then braided down to the end and tied it off.

Then I pulled the tail of the braid up and brought it through the space between the braid and the flat hair on the back of my head. Wrap around and pull through again, repeat several times to form a bun, tuck the end in under the rest of the bun.  It will stay without any fasteners, but I didn't want to risk the braid coming loose and falling out of my hijab.



The diagram shows separate strands of hair braided together, but hair is not rope. It does not behave that way unless twisted, and it would be nigh on impossible to twist all those strands of hair and keep them twisted and separate while braiding.

There was a lengthy debate on a hair forum I read about how to recreate this (some people have a lot of time on their hands - I may be one of them).

A few people continued the english braid to the end without adding more hair at the nape of the neck, made two rope braids (created by twisting two sections of hair together) out of the lower part of their hair, braided the three braids together as though they were sections of hair, then made a bun. It looked good, and seems a more likely method than the one described on the website I linked to.

The long tail of hair hanging down from the mummy's bun may be there because the bun unravelled, not because she wore it that way.

Some forum members had recreations of Viking bone hairsticks, which they fastened the bun with to prevent it from unravelling. I used a blunt #2 pencil.

This style worked well enough, but it's probably not something I would do again. There are quicker and simpler ways to make a braided bun.

(UPDATE April 2014: I have never repeated this hairstyle, but it's still one of my most-visited posts.  I'm glad other people are getting some use out of this.)