Landor’s Cottage.

The Illustrations to Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allen Poe, by Harry Clarke, 1919.  Click for full size. The second image is the Finis. This is the end of the black and white illustrations. There are eight colour plates, however I don’t know which stories they belong to, so anyone’s guess.

Caladrius.

A caladrius looks towards a sick king, indicating that he will recover.

A caladrius looks towards a sick king, indicating that he will recover.

Text Translation:

[Of the caladrius] The bird called caladrius, as Physiologus tells us, is white all over; it has no black parts. Its excrement cures cataract in the eyes. It is to be found in royal residences. If anyone is sick, he will learn from the caladrius if he is to live or die. If, therefore, a man’s illness is fatal, the caladrius will turn its head away from the sick man as soon as it sees him, and everyone knows that the man is going to die. But if the man’s sickness is one from which he will recover, the bird looks him in the face and takes the entire illness upon itself; it flies up into the air, towards the sun, burns off the sickness and scatters it, and the sick man is cured.

The caladrius represents our Saviour. Our Lord is pure white without a trace of black, ‘who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth’ (1 Peter, 2:22). The Lord, moreover, coming from on high, turned his face from the Jews, because they did not believe, and turned to us, Gentiles, taking away our weakness and carrying our sins; raised up on the wood of the cross and ascending on high, ‘he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men, (Ephesians, 4:8). Each day Christ, like the caladrius, attends us in our sickness, examines our mind when we confess, and heals those to whom he shows the grace of repentance. But he turns his face away from those whose heart he knows to be unrepentant. These he casts off; but those to whom he turns his face, he makes whole again. But, you say, because the caladrius is unclean accoording to the law, it ought not to be likened to Christ. Yet John says of God: ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up’ (4:14); and according to the law, ‘the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field’ (Genesis, 3:1). The lion and the eagle are unclean, yet they are likened to Christ, because of their royal rank
because the lion is king of the beasts; the eagle, king of the birds.

Folio 57r – the caladrius, continued.

The Hot Dog Code.

Liz Red Shoes Crokin is at it again, with yet another screeth* about the thousands of elite satanic pedophiles who are going to be taken down (they are! they really truly are!), wrapped in a couple of conspiracies and white hat false flag something or others. I think Ms. Crokin has some serious issues, to say the least. Anyroad, I don’t have time to go through the whole mess once more, but I’ll leave you all with this particular tidbit, then you can decide whether or not you want to read the rest:

Crokin said that the news reports about her battle against Teigen and Legend have inspired people to look into the Pizzagate theory themselves and start to ask questions like “why are these people ordering $65,000 worth of hot dogs to the White House under Obama’s administration?”

When Westall asked what the significance of that was, Crokin explained that “hot dog” is pedophile code for “little boy.”

Uh huh. I think the national hot dog and sausage council might not be happy with you, Liz. Do you asses ever get your pathetic minds out of the gutter? The full mess is at RWW.

*Screeth – Screed + Froth.

Stuff.

Time for more medical stuff, so we’re going to be in town the next couple of days. I’ll have the regular stuff up for Tuesday and Wednesday, but I don’t know that I’ll get much more blogging done than that, and there might be a late start on Thursday morning. TNET will be open, as always. Now, if we can just get water back (town’s water main is out again.)

Have An Apple Tree? Get Out Your Toast!

Toast swinging from an apple tree. Richard Gillin/(CC BY-SA 2.0)

Toast swinging from an apple tree. Richard Gillin/(CC BY-SA 2.0.

I do have an apple tree, so I’ll have to get some bread toasted, have some nice cider to pour and drink, and make a lot of noise.

After the New Year’s champagne is drunk and the Christmas tree is set out on the curb, the holiday season feels emphatically over. But in many apple-growing regions, there’s still one last celebration in January. Instead of champagne, the drink is hard cider. And instead of decorating a chopped-down pine, revelers tromp into apple orchards to drink and encourage a good harvest.

Apple wassailing, which has origins in southeast and southwest England, features a procession to the best apple tree in the orchard. There, revelers sing to the tree, decorate it with slices of toast to feed good spirits (and birds), and shoot rifles to scare away demons. Christmas-carolers may be familiar with the term “wassail.” An old Anglo-Saxon term for “Be in good health,” it became shorthand for both carolling and a spiced hot drink, made with either ale or cider. While pouring cider around tree roots, everyone usually shares a fanciful bowl of wassail.

You can read more about these apple tree traditions at Atlas Obscura. They date back about 500 years, and no need to worry about having missed it:

Often, it’s celebrated on January 5, which is Twelfth Night, the last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas. But Twelfth Night used to be on January 17. When the British switched from the ancient Julian calendar to the Gregorian system, though, in 1752, many counties kept the tradition on the old date. (If you live in an apple-growing area, you can celebrate twice.)