Adrian Toll

... does not a summer make.

YouTube video by Maximus Arvo Pärt - Sarah Was Ninety Years Old

It's Arvo Pärt's 90th birthday today, so seems appropriate to share one of my favourite pieces of his, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old.

Reminds me of the Boothby Graffoe joke "North Americans are always so positive aren't they? AmeriCAN, not AmeriCAN'T. CANada. Whereas we're Brit... ish."

Brighton - Wikipedia

Brighthelmstone is the old name for Brighton: 'The ancient settlement of "Brighthelmstone" was documented in the Domesday Book.' en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton

I really think it's about inserting some kind of intellectual kill switch into the smoothed-out media feed that's impossible to ignore - the way something looks doesn't cut it any more.

To swing back to the mainstream, it's like that bit where someone was on Ellen and was told for every question they got right $1,000 would be given to charity, and his response was "can't you just donate it anyway?" Entirely different level, but also reminds me of James Baldwin on 1960s talk shows.

I don't think it would be possible to co-opt Witch by Leslie Winer for example, but to produce something like that you'd need to grapple with things on a deeper intellectual level than "fight the power", which has entirely lost its shock value. (I adore 5 on that album, about the first war in Iraq).

At (post YBA) art college a tutor talked about people "making things that look like art", i.e. pieces that only had a surface connection with what art can be at its best. I think about that a lot when seeing how easily "alternative" culture is co-opted.

Timothy the tortoise: man's best friend Timothy, the lovable little reptile who's delighted readers for over 200 years - a tortoise in 18th century England, and the break out star of Gilbert White's 'The Natural History of Selborne'.

He was inherited from White's aunt...

At Datchet (near Windsor), on four days (15th, 17th, 18th & 19th) the temperature in a 'shaded' area of a garden was recorded between 90 and 96degF (latter is ~36degC); these values are probably too high by modern standards but give an idea of the intensity of the heat.

www.pascalbonenfant.com/18c/geograph... July 1825: we only have records for the London & Home Counties area, but in central London (Somerset House) there was a sequence of days from the 12th to 20th (9 days) with the maximum temperature >=27degC, with the highest value on the 19th at ~32degC.

Samuel Hieronymus Grimm - Wikipedia

Samuel Grimm illustrated The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.

YouTube video by Films by the Year Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) Annabelle Serpentine Dance, no. 3 (Edison)

Looks like the structure is at least partially inspired by this late 19th century silent film: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabel...

Kind of funny that evangelical christians skew so heavily for Trump when the symbolism of the golden calf is so in-your-face.

Lathraea squamaria - Wikipedia

Lathraea squamaria: common toothwort. "It is parasitic on the roots of hazel and alder, and occasionally other trees, and represents the second occasion on which a member of the family Orobanchaceae lost the ability to photosynthesize and became parasitic."

(Love the use of "pillow" as a verb in that poem!)

In Hilly Wood How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs But near ...

One of the comments here seems to suggest so.

Wooden cold frame in a garden with hay surrounding it and a sign in front saying "Cucumber 'Long Green Ridged'"

This was White's house last year around this time (although can't remember whether there were any harvestable cucumbers or not). He talks occationally about "hot cucumber beds", so I presume this is a recreation of that, although presumably not the perspex...

A garden scene: a wooden cold frame (a low-to-the-ground greehouse) with hay surrounding it, with a slate and chalk sign in front saying "Cucumber 'Long Green Ridged'"

Not sure if the perspex is strictly of White's time, but this was a cucumber hot bed at his house in April last year. Can't remember whether there were any swelling cucumbers in there though!

Given you're a translator I presume you know that English wasn't nearly as standardised then as it is now? White consistently uses this spelling.

Unfortunately he isn't actually back from London until the 22nd - I think this entry must have been filled in by someone tending the garden.

Keep an eye out for tomorrow's journal entry!

0°F is almost -18°C

Although given that he used social media, perhaps it would just be the case of a retweet bot!

They're easy to build, the hard bit is collecting / transcribing the entries... (Plus copyright issues for someone who hasn't been dead for a few hundred years).

For a split second there I read that as saying that Flanders was inspired to write the song by Henderson, which really confused me...

YouTube video by Flanders - Topic Misalliance

Exactly what I was thinking! www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhJ1...

Phalaena - Wikipedia

Phalaena is an obsolete genus of Lepidoptera used by Carl Linnaeus to house most moths: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaena

Thanks!

Such a lovely link to have. Initially he struck me as rather cantankerous, and while I can still see that side I've grown quite fond of him over the last few years of reading the entries.