davidcook

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251207.html

It is still

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251207.html

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251208

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251208

When we got an artificial tree to decorate the upstairs last month, it was with the confident assurance that now, we wouldn't have the bother and potential doubling of our time out in cold or rainy or worse weather finding and cutting down a Christmas tree. So, of course, the Tannenbaum God laughed and arranged for today to start with several inches of snow. This prompted bunnyhugger's parents to cancel their plan to come up to the Christmas tree farm near us and, as is their custom, buy the first tree her father sees and then wait for us to cut down two trees. But, if we should be willing to get a tree for them and drive it down to their home, if the roads seemed secure enough, that'd be great.

The roads were surprisingly good, at least outside our street, which doesn't rate plowing for a mere three inches of dry powder. It was, for once, seasonally appropriate weather for early December in mid-Michigan, which is not to say I didn't miss the times it was in the mid-50s. One of those times was when I slipped on a patch of snow-covered ice a mere ... 135 seconds ahead of the tractor pulling a carriage full of people to farther regions of the tree farm. What could I do but shrug as the riders went past, grinning that it didn't happen to them, yet?

Happily, we found a lovely tree for downstairs almost right away, and got it trimmed, bundled up, drilled for a center spike, and put in the car --- parked in literally the closest non-handicapped-reserved spot on the lot --- and could go back for another. bunnyhugger's father had told us that her mother wanted a small tree, like five or six feet, and a Frasier fir, even though they really don't tag trees that small. They didn't have any precut that short. But they did have an area with pretty near everything tagged, apparently as they expect to tear out everything and plant a new crop next year. We went searching there and in a forlorn field of snow and the remnants of once-wanted trees found a couple candidates that were between six and seven feet, although not very broad.

bunnyhugger called her father, offering to e-mail a picture of the tree and me standing beside it so they could approve the tree's height and breadth before we did anything irreversible. But her father was adamant about trusting us and that there was absolutely no reason to send a picture. It was only after we got to their house that we realized why this: bunnyhugger's mother hadn't heard anything about this ``get a really short tree'' plan. She would attribute it to her husband's desire to get a tree that she could decorate entirely herself. (They share an e-mail for reasons of they got their e-mail set up once and are afraid to ever touch it again.) Also we established that a concolor, like we get, would have been fine, so maybe next year we'll be better-informed. If the weather is just bad enough to keep them from going up and buying the first tree her father sees in the pre-cut lot.

Anyway, this let us get an extra little trip to see her parents in their home, and their dog (disappointed that bunnyhugger did not take her for an extra-long walk) and cat (wondering when all this fuss will end), which was all pleasant. It also relieved us of the terror of not having enough of the house cleaned up to let anyone else see, although it also removes the motivation to get cleaning-up done. So that's a mixed good.

Next on the photo roll is a relatively minor thing, the travel day, getting from Dolancourt to Rennes for the conference the next day. So ...

Little picture of our hotel's seats and the balcony outside that I'd spent Monday morning in, at least until I got tired and fell asleep forever.

And you can see the terrible mess we made of our desk what with the ... two bottles and a post-it note scattered around. Please note my snazzy new suitcase there too.

And here's the balcony, seating area, and bed after we'd trashed the room.

A peek down the windows in the breakfast room, showing the water mill's workings. I don't know when they last operated.

And now we're at the train station, back in Bar-Sur-Aube, which I've since learned was a more interesting town than we'd seen from its minor-stop-on-the-NJ-Transit-Line station here.

But, turns out, train station displays of historical eventage are a universal language.

Trivia: Although organized baseball has always required batters to come to the plate in a specified order, they did not originally specify where the order started in a new inning. In 1876 Henry Chadwick wrote that the custom was that, if the third out in an inning was made on a base runner, then the next inning started with the person after that base runner's, rather than (as has been the rule since 1878) the person after the last complete at-bat. Source: A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris.

Currently Reading: Sabrina the Teenage Witch: 60 Magical Stories, Editor Mike Pellerito. I was not positive, when I picked this up, that I didn't already have it because I got a collection of Sabrina stories from her 50th anniversary and of course the first couple stories, including Sabrina's slightly weird introduction story, are repeats from that. But, no, this is a different collection, and I can know that for sure because the other book I got before this one's 2022 publication and also I believe most of its stories are line work only, no color.

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/12/07/i-dont-even-know-the-words-to-that-song-louie-louie/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72155

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/12/07/i-dont-even-know-the-words-to-that-song-louie-louie/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72155

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kadowaki-elementary-school-ruins

When the Great East Japan Earthquake struck at 2:46pm on March 11, 2011, the small coastal city of Ishinomaki had the misfortune of being directly in the path of the destructive tsunami that followed. Whole neighbourhoods were leveled, and still have not been rebuilt.

As houses flooded and washed away in the face of waves up to two meters in height, fires sprang up in the floating debris, fuelled by stoves and heaters people had been using on the cold afternoon. In this setting, the local elementary school, a community hub, suffered the tragicomic irony of catching fire even as its lower levels were saturated by seawater. When the flames died out and the flood receded, the structure still stood, though its interior was ruined and its iconic white facade was stained black.

Today, with life returned to Ishinomaki, Kadonowaki school has been preserved as a memorial to the tragedy. The gym includes vehicles crushed under the force of the waves, as well as replicas of the temporary housing where people lived. You can walk through the hallways of the school and see the classrooms left untouched since the fire - in one, the desks remain where they had all been pushed to one side to make room for a science demonstration that was never completed. In other rooms, objects recall the school in happier times, a reminder of its long and vibrant role in the community, and testimonials of survivors offer powerful meditations on loss and recovery.

Throughout the school's exhibits, the overall theme is of the necessity of preparedness. This isn't presented a cynical message of doom and gloom, but as one of hope; despite the destruction of the school and surrounding community, the discipline, bravery, and teamwork of Kadonowaki's staff and students ensured every single person in the building that day made it to safety.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kadowaki-elementary-school-ruins

(Last week's also now exists and is no longer a placeholder!)

Reading. Pain, Abdul-Ghaaliq Lalkhen. I want to be very, very clear: unless you are specifically researching attitudes and beliefs in pain clinics in early 2020s England, or similar, do not read this book. There are bad history and no references, appalling opinions on patients (), quite possibly the worst hyphenation choice I have ever seen, stunning omissions and misrepresentations of pain science, and It's Weird That It Happened Twice soup metaphors. Fuller review (or at least annotated bibliography entry) to follow, maybe.

Some further progress on Florencia Clifford's Feeding Orchids to the Slugs ("Tales from a Zen kitchen"), which I acquired from Oxfam in a moment of weakness primarily for EYB purposes at a point when it was extremely discounted. It is primarily a somewhat disjointed memoir for which I am not the target audience, but hey, Books To Go Back In The Charity Shop Pile but that I wouldn't actually hate reading were exactly the goal, so that's a victory. Mostly. I'm a little over halfway through it, sticking book darts on pages that contain recipes for easier reference when I go back through on the actual indexing pass.

I absolutely needed something that was not going to make me furious and furthermore that was not going to be demanding, and there's a new one in the series, so I have now reread several Scalzi: Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades completed, The Lost Colony in progress.

I've also had a very quick flick through the mentions of Descartes in Joanna Bourke's The Story of Pain, which is my next Pain Book. She does better than everyone else I've read, but I still think she's misinterpreting Treatise on Man. (Why do I have strongly-held opinions on Descartes now. CAN I NOT.)

Playing. ( Inkulinati, Monument Valley )

Cooking. SOUP.

smitten kitchen's braised chickpeas with zucchini and pesto, two batches thereof, because I had promised A burrata to go with and then (1) the supermarket was out of it and (2) the opened part-pack of feta wound up doing two days quite comfortably, so the second batch was required For Burrata Purposes.

I have also established that the pistachio croissant strata works very well in one of the loaf tins if you scale it down to 50% quantities because there were only 3 discount croissants at the supermarket (... because you had to wait and watch the person who got there JUST ahead of you taking Most Of Them...), which also conveniently used up the dregs of the cream that I had in the fridge.

Eating. Tagine out the freezer (thank you past Alex). Relatively fresh dried apple. A very plain lunch at Teras in Seydikemer, which was apparently the magic my digestive system needed to settle itself down! And I am very much enjoying my dark chocolate raspberry stars. :)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cable-car-carpentry-shop

San Francisco's iconic cable car system is both the world's oldest and the only one still operating, but that doesn't mean that the cable cars themselves are all vintage. As working transportation vehicles constructed largely of wood, they have a limited lifespan and periodically need to be rebuilt, and new ones even have to be built from the ground up.

Parts are hard to come by for vehicles that had their heyday in the 19th century, therefore the San Francisco Municipal Railway employs their own team of skilled craftsman to do a majority of the work in-house. This work is done in an incongruously modern workshop next to a bus yard, far from the remaining cable car lines. Once a cable car is ready for service, it's trucked three miles to the cable car barn at Washington & Mason Streets.

While the shop primarily works on cable cars, they also craft parts for the city's vintage streetcar fleet.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cable-car-carpentry-shop

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/12/07/

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/12/07/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-amasya-mummies

Amasya Archaeology Museum displays six remarkably preserved bodies from the 14th-century Ilkhanid period. They are identified as Şehzade Cumudar, the Anatolian nâzır; the emir of Amasya, İşbuğa Noyan; the statesman İzzettin Mehmet Pervane Bey; his wife; and their two children.

Cumudur's titles reveal both status and heritage. Nâzır refers to a high-ranking administrative authority, similar to a regional minister overseeing Anatolia, while şehzade indicates he came from a royal lineage.

Noyan held a powerful political and military role. Noyan was a Mongol-Turkic title used for commanders. As the emir of Amasya, he served as both the city’s administrative ruler and its chief military leader.

These prominent positions help explain why their deaths may have been politically motivated. Research suggests that while the children likely died of illness, Cumudar and İşbuğa may have died by strangulation or hanging, indicating they could have been victims of internal political conflict.

Many visitors are particularly struck by how well-preserved the mummies are, especially the children, whose features appear astonishingly lifelike, offering an intimate glimpse into a world seven centuries past.

What makes this collection even more unique is that, unlike Egyptian mummies, these individuals were preserved using a regional method without the removal of internal organs, making them rare examples of Turkish and Muslim mummification. The museum also presents interpretive reconstructions of how the individuals might have looked in life, creating a vivid and personal bridge to their story.

Amasya Museum is an unmissable stop for anyone wishing to come face-to-face with some of Anatolia’s most intriguing historic mummies.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-amasya-mummies

This week's bread: Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/pinhead oatmeal), a bit dense and rough-textured - the recipe says medium oatmeal, which has seemed hard to come by for months now (I actually physically popped into a Holland and Barrett when I was out and about the other day and boy, they are all about the Supplements these days and a lot less about the nice organic grains and pulses, sigh, no oatmeal, no cornmeal, etc etc wo wo deth of siv etc). Bread tasty though.

Friday night supper: groceries arrived sufficiently early in the pm for me to have time to make up the dough and put the filling to simmer for sardegnera with pepperoni.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, dried blueberries, Rayner's Barley Malt Extracxt, turned out very nicely.

Today's lunch: savoury clafoutis with Exotic Mushroom Mix (shiitake + 3 sorts of oyster mushroom) and garlic, served with baby (adolescent) rainbow carrots roasted in sunflower and sesame oil, tossed with a little sugar and mirin at the end, and sweetstem cauliflower (some of which was PURPLE) roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/furnace-town

Nestled away in the Pocomoke Forest, the ruins of a community from the early 19th century and the furnace to match lie far from the radar of most tourists.

Furnace Town was established in the mid 1800s by the Maryland Iron Company and counted around 300 permanent residents, all tasked with the preservation and operation of the Nassawango Iron Furnace. At its peak, between 1828 and 1850, the Furnace produced around 700 tons of iron per year - bog ore from the Nassawango swamp would be thrown into the Furnace from the top and heated to 3000 degrees Farenheit and the resulting iron would be transported to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The community in Furnace Town flourished, complete with a school for children, a church, and blooming front yards, but in 1850, the Maryland Iron Company went bankrupt and the town was disbanded.

The Furnace and 7000 surrounding acres went up for sale, along with the saw and the grist mill, the iron master's mansion, stores, barns, homes, tools, 21,000 bushels of charcoal and 1,650 tons of ore. 

The town was restored in the 1960's to a museum and opened in 1982. The houses, barns and kilns have been restored and live actors play the townspeople. There are annual archeological digs for remnants of the communities' past.

The Furnace is recognized as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark and is registered with National Register of Historic Places.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/furnace-town

https://www.oglaf.com/signs/

https://www.oglaf.com/signs/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-eyam-plague-cottages

When a piece of cloth infested with fleas arrived from London, the local tailor’s assistant, George Viccars, unpacked it and became Eyam’s first plague victim. Eyam found itself on the brink of devastation. The infection spread rapidly, killing entire households. This fate was common in villages during the plague years, but what makes Eyam stand out is, rather than flee and risk carrying the disease to surrounding towns, the villagers chose isolation. They sealed themselves off for over a year, burying their dead in gardens and fields, and trading only at “boundary stones,” where coins were left in vinegar-filled hollows as payment.

Among the village’s most poignant reminders of that decision are three adjoining cottages on the main street, each marked with plaques that tell the stories of the families within. In one, every member of the household died. In another, a single survivor remained, having lost dozens of relatives.

During the plague year, nearly 260 of Eyam’s 800 villagers perished. Reminders of their sacrifice are woven throughout the village, from the cottages themselves to the museum, the Riley Graves, and the boundary stone. Together they reflect how carefully Eyam has remembered its dead, and how deeply the story still shapes the place today.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-eyam-plague-cottages

I was parked at the end of the London-bound platform at Chatham yesterday evening, waiting to catch the train into St Pancras, along with the passenger assistance guy with the ramp. As we're standing there the train to London Victoria heads out, and then we chatted for a minute before hearing an announcement about my train being delayed, despite it being at Gillingham station, which is only a couple of minutes away.

We're just wondering what the issue could be when a train pulls into our platform, but heading coastbound. Passenger Assistance guy's eyes bugged-out and he mutters something and then turns to repeat it to me: "I've worked here for forty years, and I've never seen a coastbound train come into this platform! Excuse me while I go and find out what's happening."

Turns out he still hadn't seen one, it wasn't a coastbound train, it was the Victoria train reversing back. Apparently a freight train had broken down alongside the platform at Rochester (two minutes up the line London-bound) and they'd sent the Victoria train back to Chatham to wait while they got things sorted out.

We were only delayed 20 minutes, which wasn't too bad because I was still five minutes early for meeting the university crowd for pre-Christmas drinks. And as we're now using the Betjeman Arms inside St Pancras station it was much more convenient for me than our get togethers used to be as I now just wheel from one end of StP to the other and don't need to haul myself and the chair down to Ye Old Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. (We swapped pubs a couple of years back to make things simpler for me, but this is the first time I've been able to get there since, OTOH it also makes things easier for another two out of the five of us).

We'd booked a table, and because they were using their dining room for a Christmas party we were put in 'the study', so effectively had our own wood-panelled private dining room for the night. Very swish! (As well as the big dining room and a big bar they also have an 'outside' patio area looking out across the Eurostar platforms, the place must be doing a bomb). Given how crowded it was at the bar when we arrived (I only maimed one ankle, and we'd told him to move), I let one of my friends get the beers in sight unseen, which is how I ended up drinking 'Hazy Pale'. You know how some wheat beers are slightly hazy? Well this is a bit like that, but hazy to the point of being completely opaque. Not something I'd drunk before, but would definitely drink again. Though I might have paced myself a bit differently if I'd known it was 5% ABV. 

The food was mostly good - I thought the mushrooms on toasted sourdough was a bit bland, but the fish and chips I had were done to perfection, and the other choices around the table - chicken pie, Cumberland sausage and Lancashire Hot Pot - all got the ex-Lancastrian seal of approval.

I packed in at 9:30 in the hope of catching the 9:50, as my neck had suddenly decided to become very unhappy, only to discover when I got to the platform that there isn't a 9:50 anymore, so I had to wait on the platform for about 40 minutes until the 10:20 arrived. Fortunately it was a fairly amiable crowd, I was even offered a beer by the guy sitting next to me - 'No thanks, I've had quite enough already'. There were one or two sparkly party frocks and jackets wandering past in the crowd, but style points had to go to the woman wearing the Snow White dress and tweed hacking jacket, both of them adorned with large cardboard and tinfoil stars.

Into Chatham by 11, in bed and asleep by 11:30!

Books on pre-order:

1. Platform Decay (Murderbot 8) by Martha Wells (5 May 2025)

Books acquired in November (and all read!)

1. Testimony of Mute Things (Penric & Desdemona) by Lois McMaster Bujold
2. Goalie Interference (Austin Aces) by Kim Findlay [7]
3. After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian

Books acquired previously and read in November:

1. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
2. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
3. Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
4. Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan [May 2016]

Borrowed books read in November:

1. Murder at the Grand Raj Palace (Baby Ganesha 4) by Vaseem Khan [3]

Rereads in November:

1. Heated Rivalry (Game Changers 2) by Rachel Reid
2. Tough Guy (Game Changers 3) by Rachel Reid
3. Common Goal (Game Changers 4) by Rachel Reid
4. Role Model (Game Changers 5) by Rachel Reid
5. The Long Game (Game Changers 6) by Rachel Reid

Yes there's a TV adaptation of Heated Rivalry, no it's not available (legally) in the UK yet, also I have had no time to watch it even if it were. But watching it is very definitely in my future plans.

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/heinzelmannchenbrunnen

Tucked away in the shadow of Cologne’s bustling cathedral, this charming stone fountain brings to life the city’s most beloved folktale: the legend of the Heinzelmännchen.

As the story goes, these helpful gnomes once did all the work of Cologne’s citizens—baking, brewing, and cobbling—under the cover of night, leaving the people free to live a life of leisure. That is, until a tailor’s curious wife devised a plan to see them, scattering peas on the floor to make the gnomes slip and fall. Offended by this breach of trust, the Heinzelmännchen vanished forever, leaving the citizens of Cologne to do their own work for eternity.

Sculpted by Edmund and Heinrich Renard in 1899, the fountain captures the precise moment of the gnomes’ fateful exposure, frozen in time. Each figure is brimming with personality, from the tumbling gnomes to the mischievous wife holding her lantern aloft. It’s a whimsical and slightly cautionary monument to curiosity, lost magic, and why you should never look a gift gnome in the mouth.

Pro Tip: The fountain is mounted on the wall of the famous Brauhaus Früh am Dom. The best way to appreciate the tale is with a chilled glass of Kölsch beer in hand, pondering what other magic might be hiding in plain sight. 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/heinzelmannchenbrunnen