The Good Humour Lady

You’re a busy mom in, say, London. The year is 1510. It's time to prepare dinner for your family. Something healthy and nutritious that will keep them in good humour.

The Four Basic Food Groups have not yet been grouped, the Food Pyramid has won’t be stacked for centuries.

Yet you know what to feed your family for optimal health, harmony and happiness.

How is that possible?

Because you, my dear, are a Four Humours Woman.

Any good medieval lady knows her four elements of creation: air, water, fire and earth. You know the world needs all of these in perfect balance.

You also know the four bodily fluids are:

blood- hot and moist like air,

phlegm- cold and moist like water,

yellow bile- hot and dry like fire and

black bile- cold and moist like earth.

And you are fully aware that while everyone has all the fluids, they tend to be out of kilter, which results in personality types that drive a mother to distraction.

Your son is phlegmatic. He’s lazy, a bit timid, sort of pale and, unfortunately, rather boring.

With his excess of yellow bile, your husband is choleric–quick tempered,  stubborn, and impatient with your lazy son.

But your melancholic daughter who suffers a surfeit of black bile really sends her father to the brink. She’s introspective,  greedy, and cries for no discernible reason.

Blessedly, you have a sanguine, warm-blooded nature. An optimist, you know that to feed your family a balanced meal will stabilize their bodily fluids. Harmony will reign.

So how do you make the meal that makes your family bearable?

The cold moist fish that your phlegmatic son eats has lots of hot dry garlic. Your choleric husband can eat the hot, dry baked potato, but you top it with cold, moist cheese. Your melancholy daughter loves her cold, dry bread but you insist on adding a hot boiled egg.

And what do you, sanguine, sweet-natured woman that you are, feast upon?

You balance your hot coffee with a nice cold dish of ice cream. 

Faux Winter

Winter in The Prude's town has lasted about 36 hours thus far.
We gotten some of this stuff scampering down:

which then 'covers' the ground with some temporary blotchiness

before melting into our perpetual March-mimicing vistas

The Prude is the first to admit she enjoys the relative warmth, the sun, the low heating bills, the safer roads.
But snow is pretty. Every so often she just wants to take a gander at it.
Till recently she had to be satisfied with observing photos of the Snows of Yesteryear:

But this year, The Prude has learned to cheat. Through a series of complicated steps she can take any photo and add snow to it.
She added it to this street light photo, taken on a clear, moonlit night:

She added it to her yard photo, taken on a bright, sunny day

and to the Christmas Parade, taken on a bright, moonlit evening

Without needing to lift a shovel or struggle into boots, she can enjoy softly falling snow anywhere, anytime.

Where Angry Birds lurk, can Angry Dragons be far behind?

Today, Global Village Monday, The Prude warns and informs of news in certain areas of the world that may or may not affect certain other areas. Could there be a sinister connection between the frightening new commemorative stamp in China, an uproar over a sushi-bound tuna in Japan and the popular game developed in Finland called ‘Angry Birds’?

Of course.

The anger is headed this way and soon will be lapping at the cheerful shores of the US.

Stick with me here and see the connections:

1) Bird flu was first reported in China. This makes the Finnish birds angry

2) China is entering the Year of the Dragon.

It issued a commemorative stamp of a fierce, raging dragon.

There are rumblings that the dragon is ‘too scary’.

Speculation abounds on why the fearsome dragon is sold in China when it could be scaring the pants off the rest of the world.

3)  China and Japan are not the best of pals.

The Chinese originated sushi 2400 years ago. But the Japanese

‘adopted’ it as their own and now everyone who thinks ‘sushi’ thinks ‘Japan’.

A bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Japan recently snared a whopping quarter of a million dollar price tag from a sushi restaurant chain. This makes tuna lovers livid. They want the bluefin tuna protected

You see how chain reactions work. What is next?

Possibly 4) Livid tuna lovers in Japan may spawn copycat protests in America.

Pigs could wonder why no one stands up and speaks for THEM.

This could irk pork producers in the US who already suffer an identity crisis.

The pigs could start a rumble with the producers.

And if you know anything about the game ‘Angry Birds’, nothing makes them angrier than pigs.

Which lands us back in Finland with birds in high dudgeon ready to get the ball of wrath rolling around the world again.

Remember: Anger is one letter short of danger. Be alert for acrimonious pigs. You heard it here first.

Intellectuals One Wonders About

Intellectuals Somewhere in Iowa. Circa 2008

The excitement in Iowa is over for another 4 years.

The media and the candidates have left the state.

Iowa shuts the door behind them with gracious firmness.

It mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘finally’ and gets back into planning

the spring crops that will feed 10% of its fellow Americans.

How did this average-size state with a small population in the middle of the continental US choose as frontrunners a Mormon, an all-but-flatlined homeschooling dad and a maverick who paddles outside of every conceivable mainstream?

And how about giving the lone female candidate (who was born in Iowa, incidentally) so few votes that she dropped out of the race?

The Prude believes she has these anomalies nailed down. 

She feels qualified to make some sweeping generalizations based on her:

-extensive Iowa  internet research this morning

-9 months spent living in Iowa when she was in 1st grade.

First we need to dispel the notion that Iowans are a bunch of ‘Idiots Out Walking Around’. They have the highest literacy rate in the nation. They also have a law on the books that restricts kissing to 5 minutes or less.

You see the connection.

Lots of reading + minimal smooching= folks with time to research candidates

Next, understand that Iowa doesn’t have a whole slew of people, and the ones they have tend to be scattered and the ones that are scattered tend to be aging at a brisk pace. So when they have a chance every four years to come together and ‘caucus’

(talk in groups about who they want to support) instead of ‘primary’ (enter a tiny booth by oneself to place a private vote) they maximize the time to pick the candidate who best exemplifies IOWA.

Which begs the question– who exemplifies Iowa?

John Wayne, Buffalo Bill, Dear Abby and her twin, Billy Sunday, Johnny Carson, Frederick Maytag and George Gallup were all born in Iowa. Our caucus voters come from stock that is rough and tumble, plain-spoken, outside the prevailing religious views,

goofy, inventive and, when all is said and done, deciding the front-runner exactly as the pollsters predicted.

The Prude can’t wait to see what New Hampshire will do. After all, Mary Baker Eddy, Horace Greeley and Mandy Moore were all born there.

Stock up on the ginger

This will be fun. Today is History AND Craft Project Wednesday.
The Prude wants to share this delightful little idea to make history enjoyable and edible.
Turn your historical figures into gingerbread men.
The folks on the platter were created by the Prude to give to her English history and lit class.
They represent some of our favorite real or fictional personages.

See if you can tell who is who.

-which is the Pictish warrior at the vanguard of the body paint/tattoo craze?
-which is  Celtic Queen Boudicca, a woman with a vendetta against the Romans?
-which is the Green Knight who lost his head over Sir Gawain?
-which is King Alfred the Great and his burned griddle cake, whose greatness did not extend to baking?
-which is the  Monster Grendal who would have given his right arm to defeat Beowulf?
-which one, with his Merry Men, robbed from the rich? (hint: the answer is not the US government)

Think of the fun you can have. You can make Lord of the Rings gingerbread men.
US Presidents.
American Idol contestants.
You could even move beyond human form and make the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The Prude has dibs on the pyramid.

Tomorrow is Quirks of the Cosmos Thursday, and we may just have more fun looking at the results of the Iowa Caucus.

Mama, don't let your babies grow up in politics

The Prude is dispirited. Today was the day she was to finish up her Iowa Caucus series with Rick Santorum. She read the nastiness spewed about him and his family. Nastiness from other Americans who, because of disagreement over politics and personal views, use the Santorums for target practice with ammunition comprised of blobs of muck and shards of mockery.

She googled his name for the basic info. Basic info, according to Google, includes a vast number of nasty sites with a lot of nasty content making nasty comments about Mr. Santorum

Then she googled ‘Rick Santorum Family’. But did Rick Santorum’s actual family pop up? Or did The Duggar Family, who endorses him, pop up? Can you guess? It took till almost page 3 of the search before I got info on the Santorums. And it was nasty and mean-spirited info. 

She toyed with heading another, lighthearted direction and talk about the Santorum Italian roots, or link Roman politics to American politics. But there are nasty stereotypes about Italian Americans and Roman politics had a nasty bent.

Politics is a nasty business. It always has been. The ancient Romans were nasty. Parliament gets nasty. Research 200 plus years of campaigns in the US and you will find 200 plus years of smearing, name calling and family mocking.

We haven’t changed. We aren’t any nastier today than Brutus and Julius. But we can spread our muck and filth so much further and faster. We used to fear that one touch of a button could set off worldwide nuclear war. Now one click of a mouse sets off a chain of destruction that decimates another human’s name and reputation. Destroy enough people in this manner and our system is built on nothing but a shredded pile of mud-spattered names and principles.

Can we do better? Maybe, maybe not. But we surely can’t do much worse.

Hair to the Chief

Quick! If we double up Rick Perry and Mitt Romney today, we can squeeze Rick Santorum in tomorrow and that way we’ll have hit all the major candidates in the Iowa Caucus by the time the polls close Tuesday!

Rick and Mitt are an easy match. They have so much in common that you may start to mutter ‘conspiracy’ under your breath. Essentially they are the same side of two coins.

Consider:

-the ancestry of both harkens back almost exclusively to jolly old England

-both had fathers in politics

-both started academic life as so-so students

-Romney was on the pep squad, Perry was a ‘yell leader’ (aka cheerleader)

-both enjoyed playing pranks

-Perry has a wife named Anita, Romney’s is Ann

-both have written 2 books. One book has extolled an organization (Perry’s the Boy Scouts, Romney’s the Olympics) and one extolls America.

Is this not enough to give you pause? To make you reflect on chance, coincidence, or the possibility of a presidential breeding machine?

But wait! There is more!

Both have copious amounts of hair follicles filled to the absolute brim with springy flowing locks.

Their busy follicles take up residence a scant few inches up their foreheads and continue up and over the crown of each presidentially hopeful head, down past the cerebellum, and around the sides, stopping a tidy few millimeters above the ears.

It is the hair that has the Prude in a contemplative mood. 

Is an abundance of hair a desirable trait in a candidate for public office? Do we trust Men with Hair? 

The Prude went back to her Chart of the Presidents and the last time we had one whose forehead had access unimpeded by overstocked hair follicles to his afthead

was President Eisenhower. 

Who was a more trustworthy gentleman that Ike? Who looked more gentle and grandfatherly? 

What The Prude is asking is this: Where are our balding candidates?

She doesn’t want to bias you against Mr. Romney or Mr. Perry simply because they have hair in abundance. 

But she does hope to someday see an abundance of candidates with a full head of glowing epidermis.