Rosemary for Remembrance

BART issues a helpful poster explaining to women how to conduct themselves so they won't be harassed. Apart from the ubiquitous victim-blaming, note "Don't get distracted, phones, music, and sleeping can make you a target."

Many, many women use earbuds to deter creepers. It doesn't always work, but it cuts back on people assuming you're available for conversation.

I'd love to live in the universe where BART and others put up posters telling passengers how to defend other passengers against creepers.

This is the first time in months, maybe years, that I felt good enough Sunday morning to go to the market. What a joy.

Big fat leeks, green garlic -- these two make an amazing puréed soup -- cilantro, Thai basil, Italian basil, scallions, water cress (the real one), three boxes of raspberries (!) free-range eggs including one green one, purple and crimson anemones, mixed freesias, mixed sweet peas.

It's good to be back.

Crossposting and importing are now broken unless you've signed the new LJ agreement.

(A) The author of the book was male
(B) I would not be buying it

The viewpoint character is discussing a robot she's excavating.
Seen when skimming the pages of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel, on the recommendations shelf  of my local bookstore.

Her strong enchantments failing,
  Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
  And the knife at her neck,

The Queen of air and darkness
  Begins to shrill and cry,
'O young man, O my slayer,
  To-morrow you shall die.'

O Queen of air and darkness,
  I think 'tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
  But you will die to-day.

(Anybody want to expound on why it's "I shall" vs. "you will"?)

The Trump admin releases its list of underreported terrorist crimes.

It includes San Bernardino, the Pulse nightclub, the Berlin attack on the Christmas market... The only way those could have been more reported would have been mandatory tattoos on the backs of our retinas.

It also includes a lot of single killings in countries that never make the US news until they spontaneously explode, killing at least one US citizen.

(posted for future reference)

I was reading the New York Times account of "the" Mrs. Astor's daughter's wedding in 1884*. The wedding description included descriptions of all the flowers**. The front parlor held "two bunches of choice pink roses set off with the costly Farleyeuse [sic] fern." I was curious about that costly fern, so I decided to track it down . It took some doing because of the misspelling. Somewhere in the transcription and transmission process a "u" turned into an "n".

Farleyense is now known to be a cultivar rather than a species; it was discovered in Barbados in 1865. I found pictures in the Online Plant Guide. It's an exquisite thing, densely packed with leaves and with each leaf subtly shaded from green to pink tips. You can see that it would be very pretty with pink roses.

The American Journal of Horticulture and Florist's Companion v. 6 (no date) comments that it "must for many years continue to be valuable; for it can only be increased by division, and the few who have plants rather prefer to keep them intact as specimens than to tear them up for multiplication." This, together with the slow growth habit mentioned in the Online Plant Guide, would explain its rarity. I assume that the ferns mentioned in the wedding notice must have been in pots surrounding the cut roses.

* "The" Mrs. Aster was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, who came from an old Dutch family, then the highest society in New York, and married into the then-upstart new-money Astors. She was the lady whose associate, Ward McAllister, coined the idea of the 400, the most elite people in New York. 400, not so coincidentally, was the number of people her ballroom accommodated.

** The reporter lays emphasis on the expensiveness of the flowers: "Palms and ferns and creeping plants, roses and orchids, lilies and violets, carnations and marguerites, filled every part of the house..." The wedding was in mid-November, so the garden plants listed would have been out of season. Carnations used to be one of the most expensive of flowers rather than, as now, one of the cheapest. I wonder what changed in cultivation.

I was just linked to this short British film intended to scare children away from unsafe swimming/play areas. Holy shit.

Tumblr post with pictures.

That pan is getting retired. Amazingly badly designed.

I couldn't remember what lussekattar (lussebullar) recipe I used last time, so I clicked through on Saveur's.

For 32 buns, you used two teaspoons of saffron. I have never had two whole teaspoons of saffron in my house at any time in my entire life. Boggle.