Dear friends,

The older I get, the more I believe that calendars are bunk (no shade to the hemerologists among you), and we should only acknowledge milestones based on observation and practice—it’s not the new year until you have eaten the last of the holiday sweets, or until you’ve had your first ‘what are we doing this year?’ meeting at work, or given up on your first new year’s resolution.

One of my new year’s resolutions (which has been one of my resolutions for years and years now) is to sort through all the photographs I take and put them into nice neat categories or albums or delete them. (This will never be complete.) I often take photos of things to look up later—such as the throne of the queen of the Barcelona Floral Games—which led me to find that there was also an Esperanto version of this literary contest!

We should bring back hookey! as a exclamation meaning ‘nonsense! rubbish!’. It’s not like we don’t have plenty of occasion to use it. I think we would also get a lot of use out of ubuesque for describing someone ‘ugly, vulgar, gluttonous, grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jejune, voracious, greedy, cruel, cowardly and evil’. (Wikipedia)

The secret process Thomas Gainsborough used to make his varnished drawings.

As someone who wears a dress every day, I enjoyed this story of the Bolivian women who climb mountains in their pollera (traditional skirts).

A fattura della morte is a “an ordinary Neapolitan green lemon, into which twenty-four clout-headed nails and half a dozen wire nails are stuck, the nails being secured by a string twisted round their heads.” It is used to ill-wish others.

In 1895, the English feminist Edith Lanchester was committed to an asylum against her will for planning to live with her working-class lover outside of marriage. “The "Supposed Cause" of her insanity was recorded on the certificates as "over-education".” (Wikipedia)

Stay well!

Your friend,

Erin

PS Thanks to Robin Sloan and Jason Kottke for sending nearly 100 new readers to this newsletter!