Sweet broom

Here’s an old foreshadow–give or take the odd sacrifice–of a recent nocturnal trip in the English translation by Grace Frick of Yourcenar’s Hadrian: A few days before the departure from Antioch I went to offer sacrifice, as in other years, on the summit of Mount Casius. The ascent was made by night; just as for…

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Some of you will know at least one of the ladies in this photo.

Cinderella’s slippers: glass, squirrel or amber?

Mark Liberman wonders whether Cinderella slipped two dead squirrels round her tootsy-toes that night, while Chris Waigl does not. I think glass is a reasonable interpretation, although it may not have been the material used. DH Green (Language and History in the Early Germanic World) notes that both Pliny and Tacitus used glaesum/glesum to refer…

Cinderella’s slippers: glass, squirrel or amber?

Mark Liberman wonders whether Cinderella slipped two dead squirrels round her tootsy-toes that night, while Chris Waigl does not. I think glass is a reasonable interpretation, although it may not have been the material used. DH Green (Language and History in the Early Germanic World) notes that both Pliny and Tacitus used glaesum/glesum to refer…

On the run from the guiding mafia

I’ve never really thought of myself as a tourist guide, but the guilds do and they want to close people like me down. I’ll bet they made up half the scam stories, but I could identify with the Russian guide who allegedly mistook the Sant Adrià power station for the Sagrada Família.

Trouble on the Trans-Saharan line

Were Zapatero to read the Bible as thoroughly as we Carpathian Independents, he’d be in a better position to understand the significance of the first photo-album of his glorious Alliance of Civilisations: the crowds sent to die in a desert in connivance with Morocco, the stigmata on the hands of those who make it over…