_________________________________
Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Snot ye shall always have with ye.
Snot, that slippery aqueous secretion produced by, and covering, the nasal mucous membrane.

Negatively important.

Like when it makes it difficult to sleep.
Blocking our nasal passages; breathing through our mouths.
Not comfortable.
Not sustainable.
Reach for the decongestants.
May work.
Or not. 

“You sound stuffed.”
A familiar comment when we have a cold.
Like we/re squeezing our noses as we talk.

A bane to caregivers.
So sad when an infant has a cold and has trouble breathing.
Nasal aspirators for infants often help.
Not a lot of fun for either caregiver or child.

Tasting is not recommended.

Snot can lead to solecisms that society may pardon but will always remember.
Like blowing your nose with a tissue.
Usually your aim is accurate and the mucous lands dead center into the tissue.
Some of us look at it.
Proud of the catch that has made it easier to breathe.

But sometimes it misses, coming out below the bottom of the tissue and landing God knows where.
Now panic ensues.
Where is that little snot?
We look down, hoping to see it and dispose of it before anyone else does.
We don’t see it.
We slide our hands over our shirts, feeling for it.

That works and the snot sticks to our hands and we use a clean part of the tissue to clean our hands, which we now must wash.

Yes.
Not a lot of fun, the snot.

It isn’t in the bible but, unfortunately,
Snot ye shall always have with ye.

______________________________
Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Wednesday, March 13, 2019

My 335th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.

Time is 12.01am.
On Wednesday Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 41* with a feels-like temperature of 37* under mainly sunny skies.

Dinner alone. TBD, leaning to sushi.

______________________
Tick Tock : Marking Calendars and Weather Thoughts

After 335 posts we’re at the 6.70% mark of my commitment,
the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.

Do you notice the count?
Slowly.
Just one click a day.
But every day, without missing a beat.
335. 6.70%




______________________________
Question of the Day
What is a roc?

______________________________
Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com

This from David Mediano:

Lisa and I belong to the Boston and Monadnock Mycological Clubs. Yesterday we all met in Chinatown to visit herbalists and markets to learn more about mushrooms. We capped off the day with a delightful 9 course mushroom banquet at the infamous China Pearl. One of our featured speakers was a friend of yours, Ben who use to sell you mushrooms. He spoke highly of you and could not thank you enough for the way he was mentioned in your book. He also mentioned how you told him he was not getting enough for his mushrooms. He said he learned a lot from you. He was a blast!

Just thought you should know.

David

Web Meister Responds: Love Ben and Mai Jing. Loved watching them start their business. Was happy to be able to help. Freshly picked wild mushrooms were a first back then. Ben was truly a pioneer.

_______________________
Elephant jokes to tell at a bar:
What looks like an elephant and flies?

_______________________
Answer to the Question of the Day:
What is a roc?

The roc is an enormous legendary bird of prey in the popular mythology of the Middle East.

The roc appears in Arabic geographies and natural history, popularized in Arabian fairy tales and sailors' folklore. Ibn Battuta tells of a mountain hovering in the air over the China Seas, which was the roc.
The popular story collection One Thousand and One Nights includes tales of Abd al-Rahman and Sinbad the Sailor, both of which include the roc.

Through the 16th century the existence of the roc could be accepted by Europeans. In 1604 Michael Drayton envisaged the rocs being taken aboard the Ark:

All feathered things yet ever knowne to men,
From the huge Rucke, unto the little Wren;
From Forrest, Fields, from Rivers and from Pons,
All that have webs, or cloven-footed ones;
To the Grand Arke, together friendly came,
Whose severall species were too long to name.

Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela reported a story reminiscent of the roc in which shipwrecked sailors escaped from a desert island by wrapping themselves in ox-hides and letting griffins carry them off as if they were cattle.

In the 13th century, Marco Polo (as quoted in Attenborough (1961: 32)) stated

It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure.

Polo claimed that the roc flew to Madagascar "from the southern regions", and that the Great Khan sent messengers to the island who returned with a feather (likely a Raphia frond).
He explicitly distinguishes the bird from a griffin.

In The Arabian Nights the roc appears on a tropical island during Sinbad's second voyage. Because of Polo's account, others identified the island as Madagascar, which became the location for stories about other giant birds.
Doubtless, it was Polo's description that inspired Antonio Pigafetta, one of Ferdinand Magellan's companions, who wrote or had ghost-written an embroidered account of the circumglobal voyage: in Pigafetta's account the home grounds of the roc were the seas of China.
Such descriptions captured the imaginations of later illustrators, such as Johannes Stradanus ca 1590 or Theodor de Bry in 1594 who showed an elephant being carried off in the roc's talons, or showed the roc destroying entire ships in revenge for destruction of its giant egg, as recounted in the fifth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor.
Ulisse Aldrovandi's Ornithologia (1599) included a woodcut of a roc with a somewhat pig-like elephant in its talons, but in the rational world of the 17th century, the roc was regarded more critically.

_______________________
Good Morning on this Wednesday, the Thirteenth of March.

Today we talked about nasal mucous secretion. Enough said.
We talked about today’s weather and dinner.
We talked a bit about the weather morphing from winter into spring.
We asked about rocs.
We posted a letter from David M recounting his encounter with a unique individual, Ben Maleson, who brought freshly caught wild mushrooms to the menus of many fine restaurants.
And we took a good look at rocs.

And now? Gotta go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Your Love