I like to think that I have a pretty good imagination. After all, the fantasy genre is one of my favorites – give me a good dragon story any day. So it wasn’t out of character that yesterday, when I stumbled upon a show called “Mythical Beasts”, I didn’t automatically change the channel. I won’t go into the ethics of the Science Channel in airing this stuff, but suffice it to say the way they lay out these shows isn’t using exacting science.
It didn’t take long before I was down the rabbit hole. I started looking for the iconic Loch Ness photo (which was debunked decades and decades ago). This led me to the Lagarfljot Worm, an ice serpent in Iceland. It’s supposedly been terrorizing the countryside for centuries, often cited as being responsible for harsh weather and crop failures. This led me to Nahuelito, another lake-based monster in Argentina, similar to Nessie. This led me to the Windigo, which I had heard of but didn’t know about. Apparently it can influence people into greed, murder and cannibalism. This led me to a book called “Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids” (yes, then I had to look up cryptids)! Of course, I have requested the book from the library. If I hadn’t decided to go downstairs for lunch, who knows how long I would have been trolling the internet for made-up beings.
If you had asked me last week if I would be looking up mythical beings this week I would have laughed out loud. You can just never tell where my bring wants to go.
Any rabbit holes for you lately?
Trail Baboon 
Sherrilee, you’ve already told me mine.
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We have cryptozoological specimens a lot closer than Nessie. There’s Peppie in Lake Pepin and Rocky in Rock Lake Wisconsin and Champ in Lake Champlain. Then there’s the Jersey Devil in New Jersey and Mothman in West Virginia. And chupacabra, of course.
It’s not as fantastic as cryptids but I’ve been obsessed the last few months with reading various histories about New York City. I think it started with Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel. Mitchell was a journalist from the 1930s onward whose beat was exploring the odd nooks and interviewing the quirky characters he would find. From there I followed with books about the rise of the labor movement in the early nineteenth century when the industrial revolution was moving manufacturing from individual artisans and piece workers to factories—Sean Wilenz’s Chants Democratic and Christine Stansell’s City of Women. Luc Sante’s book, Low Life is about the seamy side of New York City, especially in the 19th century. I even read a book called The Old Merchants of New York. Written by Walter Barrett in the 1850s, it’s about prominent businessmen in the city and how they started and about their families. It seems like it shouldn’t be that interesting but it was. Apparently folks in the 19th century thought so too. The book I read, volume one, is the first of five. Christine Stansell’s bookAmerican Moderns, is about the bohemian culture around Greenwich Village in the first decade of the 20th century, with characters like Emma Goldman and John Reed and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I have more books at hand, like Junius Henri Browne’s The Great Metropolis, but I’m giving it a rest for the moment.
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My rabbit holes aren’t nearly as organized or comprehensive as yours, Bill. I did enjoy The City of Women on your recommendation.
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What makes it a rabbit hole, you might ask, as opposed to an area of study. Well, first of all I’ve never actually been to New York City and secondly all this reading has no application that I can foresee.
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I have a question for you, if you return to this page, Bill. I have not done your more careful sort of reading about NYC, but from what I’ve heard there is a great deal of change going on all the time in individual boroughs and in the city overall. In some places at some times, NYC’s individual areas can be pleasant or awful places to live. Areas of town that seem hopelessly grim and trashy can later arise. A typical cycle has an area falling into disrepute and criminality, then low housing costs might attract young creative people, and things change in a positive direction.
Or so it seems when viewed from afar. Am I right to think that parts of the city or even the city itself fluctuate enormously when viewed over a broad span of time?
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Gentrification is common to most cities, I think. Areas that are undesirable, either because they are considered unsafe or because they are just run down are eventually colonized by artists and creative types who are attracted by the low rents. The influx of artists and other young people eventually changes the perception of safety in the area and developers start to move in, replacing the low rent structures with ones that trade on the new, hip character of the neighborhood, raising the price of rents and forcing the artists to look for new low-rent digs.
In historic New York City, the most notorious area was the Five Points District, a slum built on the filled-in Collect Pond, which at one time been a source of drinking water for the city. The businesses around Collect Pond had included a slaughterhouse and numerous tanneries. According to Walter Barrett in The Old Merchants of New York, a lot of the prominent nineteenth century merchants got their start as proprietors of tanneries.
Anyway, the five points area is now the site of the Civic Center.
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I meant to add that the presence of tanneries and slaughterhouse polluted Collect Pond…
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Thanks, Bill. I think your answer amounts to “yes.”
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I’ve told this before, but I was working once with a restaurant development group that was looking to open a chain of western-themed restaurants. They wanted a name and we were throwing out suggestions, including some Native American-sounding ones. They were particularly enamored with the sound of Windigo. I suggested to them that if they researched it they might find it didn’t convey the image they thought it did.
Since then, I’ve discovered, and eaten at, a restaurant in Stoughton, Wisconsin called Wendigo.
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From the internet: “The windigo or wendigo is believed to be the spirit of winter and a symbol of the dangers of selfishness. The windigo is generally considered a horrifying entity with an insatiable taste for human flesh.”
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They seem to have embraced their namesake at the restaurant. Their website is headed by a photo of a plaque that says “for all beasts, great and small”!
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The 2020 election was rigged.
Trump will be President again August 13.
The c-19 vaccines are a New World Order mass sterilization plot.
Bamboo fibers reveal China fixed the election
Chickens ate the Arizona ballots.
The c-19 vaccines affect the DNA.
I was turned into newt.
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I got better.
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Ha – you beat me to it.
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It all started with Newt.
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OT- Headed to Olympic National Forest.
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OT. Blevins this Sunday at Caroline’s. 2 p.m. I just sent am email around to everybody local with her new address!
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Not that anybody is expecting me to show up, but thought I’d confirm that I’ll not be there. I’m committed to visiting with Philip of Sunday afternoons.
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We’ll drink a toast to you!
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❤
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I’ve started using the ‘Find a grave’ website recently, and i’ve gotten lost on there a few times.
Plus my usual farmer Youtube sites, or maybe I search for something specific which gives me a million more randomly related videos.
FB lately is suggesting videos which honestly, there’s no reason some of these people have made a video of that in the first place. Talk about your bad movies. No plot, no point… why did you even make that public??
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Don’t even get me started…
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Going by the things that endlessly pop up on YouTube, I can believe it.
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I have taken some photos to post on “Find a grave”; it’s easy to get drawn in, especially when you have a pause in your regular work, as I did last year. I sought out cemeteries in the spring, to have someplace to go where I could avoid people. Many local graves on my dad’s side, not so many on my mom’s – they are in South Dakota and Wisconsin.
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OT: by the way, we still don’t know if our Moors and Christians fiesta will go ahead. In a normal year, “rehearsing” may well have started by now. That consists of thinly disguised partying, partly in the street, and partly in rented or borrowed premises, often with a hiring marching band, who may well sit round a table and share the food and drink, playing sporadically. In fact, if the decision’s made to go ahead, they can get by with less preparatory fun. A shame, though. The guys will have less chance to disgrace themselves, have a band refuse to work for them again, etc (that has happened. Two years ago, after an incident, the band just up and picked up their instruments and left, and wouldn’t even answer emails since then. A pretty sore subject with Maria, the current President, I bet. Her husband is one of the main ringleaders in any misbehavour, and there’s plenty. He has an infuriating charm, though).
But basically, we don’t know yet if it’s on, and it would have to be carefully thought out.
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my shipt delivery gig is my rabbit hole
it’s like crack
i get up early stay late and leave little time for anything else
the gig is engrossing the payback enough to keep me at it and i have plumbed in movie night tuesday and guitar night wednesday plus cards first thursday and guitar at someone else’s house second friday
life is a rabbit hole
the trail is my rest
not a spot for every one
but for me it is the best
rabbit hole is a leading thought
comes along as you begin
it’s starts out innocently
and soon leads you from within
you lose track of time and space and thought
it’s really kinda cool
until you get your yourself control
it plays you for a fool
rabbit hole today is common
binge watching tv stuff
about the same as in my day
6 bongs was just enough
a little thought a little fun
a smile at thought romance
a little song a little dance
a little seltzer down your pants
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Tim, if I could do likes, you’d get one. I saw the last verse first, and it was obviously you. I even understood some of it.
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I do have a rabbit hole I’ve fallen down. I was itching for a while, to comment on music on YouTube (a rabbit hole in itself). I thought maybe you had to register, or that Jane might have to pay extra, or something. When I finally started to comment, she was disparaging. Every commenter was something called a troll, just looking to be unpleasant and cause trouble. I would just get drawn into needless conflict, not to mention that cyberthugs were looking to “get” anyone who said anything conspicuous. It really didn’t turn out so bad, but Jane does have this 29 year belief that I’m naive. No idea why. So I didn’t ask her advice about this Tuba Skinny fan in St. Paul, Minnesota, who wanted to swap email addresses with me. So we could insult Confederate flag waving Hank Junior fans without getting constantly deleted for obscenity. My sister said it was OK, so I did it. Then he got me on to his “online discussion group,” and I somehow got signed up to it. Didn’t even ask my sister this time. And this group turns out to be a “blog!” I always thought, why would you get involved with something with a stupid name like that? And it’s part of what’s known as “social media!” Aaaaagh!
Trouble is, I like all of you. But I really should tell my wife.
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I speak for myself but I guess I’m speaking for most of us here that if you had asked us 15 years ago if we would ever be part of an online blog community, those of us who even knew what that meant would have fallen down on the floor laughing. So you’re in the right place!
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I suppose I kind of thought that, or I wouldn’t have said it. Trouble is, my sister messaged me a month ago, saying how people (meaning me) slowly got drawn into the world of technology despite themselves. And I said, Oh no, not me. I’ve gone as far as I’m going to go.
And I have! I can give up any time!
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More than fifteen years ago, there were Listservs, which were online interest groups that could converse about a particular subject on a group email setup that wasn’t subject to data mining and was just an interchange between individuals who shared a common interest.
With the rise of Facebook, individuals migrated to a format where everything they contributed to the conversation became the property of Facebook, for Facebook to use or sell. I chose at that point not to participate.
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I see no need to tell your spouse everything. As far as activities go, writing on a blog like this is relatively harmless. There are lots of things I don’t tell my husband, not because I want to keep them from him but because, after almost 42 years of marriage, I can pretty accurately predict what he will or will not be interested in.
Congratulations to England for winning today’s match against Denmark, 2-1, in overtime. The final, between Italy and England, is on Sunday – I think.
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PJ, thanks, yes I have things I don’t tell Jane, for that simple reason. She’s not interested. But I do feel, on the one hand, I’m kind of deceiving her. On the other hand, it’s my business. I don’t ask her what she’s doing on her phone. But she does often say to me “who are you texting?,” which I resent, but as I don’t want to make waves, I almost invariably say, my sister. She must think there’s not much my two sisters and I don’t know about each others’ lives.
But are you kidding me? England won something? I didn’t think that happened.
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My rabbit holes this week have to do with nutrition for a person with oral thrush who has trouble swallowing.
OT: We have an ultrasound scheduled tomorrow, followed by a phone consult with one of his surgeons. Then Friday a.m. he’ll have a Visual Swallow Study. Something has to give, because he can’t live on bone broth. Other than that, the speech therapy is working well.
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Let’s hope Friday comes around soon.
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Oh, Barbara! That sounds difficult. Good luck to both of you, and I trust you will keep us informed.
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Those swallow studies, I’d never even heard of them a few months ago. Then a friend of mine suffered a brain injury and part of his recovery was the swallow test.
Hoping all the best swallows possible for husband!
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