WEEKEND PICK & MIX

(For bigger versions of photographs, just apply a click)

I tend to use punctuation as I see fit when I'm the one doing the writing, so articles like these are only sources of amusement, and surprise that anybody would care enough about where and when to type any kind of a dash (who knew there was more than one?)... or a row of dots.

For the passing pedant dottily dashing around:

Why everyone and your mother started using ellipses ... everywhere.
by Matthew J.X. Malady.

&

You're using that dash wrong
by James Harbeck

Erm...wrongly? (Wink - I can do pedant too).

 From husband's vintage photograph collection

"There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres."
-Pythagoras

Yesterday at Huffington Post

Tom Coburn Wants Federal Employees To Turn Off The Lights Before Leaving The Office

Sometimes I'm flabbergasted to find that the USA is literally decades behind the UK in stuff like this. In every government office where I worked, from the 1960s onward (quite a few), there was a notice posted prominently demanding that all lights must be switched off when leaving any office or other room empty.

As we might say, back in t'old country: "Mr Coburn, did you know that Queen Anne's dead?"

My grandmother used to describe a person who was vastly overweight as being "fat as Fanny Watson". I'd always assumed that Fanny Watson was someone Gran had known locally. I accidentally stumbled upon evidence to the contrary the other day. See Yesteryear Once More, here:

New York City. — Too fat? Lots of people are — but not many have the thrilling experience of Fanny Watson, who awoke one morning to find herself getting thinner and getting paid for it.

Fanny does a stunt with her sister in vaudeville, and of course she’s always adding new quirks and turns to her act. The other day she — but let her tell it.

“Of course I knew I was too fat,” she admits frankly, “but I was lazy — like a lot of women. I hated exercise and I loathed dieting. So I went on my sugary, near-obese way until that glad morning when my dress bands began to overlap and I had the merry whim to get weighed. Maybe you won’t believe it, but as near as I could figure I had lost ten pounds in two weeks!"

How on earth my Gran, in a tiny East Yorkshire village, had heard about Fanny Watson in New York is a mystery.

On the topic of of weight watching, how about this for a test of will set by Weight Watchers? How cruel was that? The smell of that fudge alone could drive a gal to sin.

 Spotted  by husband, somewhere in Texas

During research into my family's history I discovered a family(or branch of a family) of the same surname as my paternal grandfather, Scott (or Skott), in the same general area of Suffolk where he was born. This family, who may or may not be linked to mine further down the line, emigrated to The New World in 1634 on a ship called The Elizabeth. One of their relative's also appears on the list of tradesmen and bankers financing the trip. I found this article interesting anyway, it relates to
The Great Migration........Snip:

There were a few key factors that caused so many of our ancestors to leave East Anglia. The region had been the economic power house of England but it was hard hit by an economic depression in the first half of the 1600s. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Puritan movement developed deep roots in East Anglia and its bordering counties. Dedham, Essex, for example, was considered a "hot bed" of Puritan agitation. The Church of England eventually tired of this and helped drive the militants to the new world.

Most were from the East Anglia region northeast of London which was then known as the Eastern Association. This pattern is consistent with what is known of the more general immigration patterns of the "Great Migration."

The Elizabeth left Ipswich, Suffolk, England on April 10, 1634. The ship's "master" was William Andrews (Andrewes) (Andres), arriving in Massachusetts Bay. The date of record,in this case, is some six months after the ship departed. The ship arrived safe at Massachusetts Bay. Both the master and ship are known to have made subsequent trips although no record (other than departure) of this particular voyage remains.

Typically, ships making this voyage weighed between 10 and 100 tons (the Mayflower was quite big at 180 tons) and traveled at 7 - 10 knots with a passenger load of around one hundred. Interestingly, Master William Andrews was known to be an Ipswich (Suffolk) man and he eventually settled in New England, on or after 1635.

William Stafford was such a comfortable poet, that's the way his work affects me anyway. He, other of his poems, and his astrology, are mentioned in two archived posts
HERE and HERE

One of his:

Allegiances

It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.

Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked-
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we
encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.

Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler's ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.

***********************


Just the first verse of another of his poems,
At Cove on the Crooked River

At Cove at our camp in the open canyon
it was the kind of place
where one might look out
some evening and see trouble
walking away.

I love: "...and see trouble walking away."

 Husband took this one winter morning at sunrise from our kitchen window