Closing tabs

Trying to get school-related tasks done this last two weeks has been like wading through marmalade - that always happens at the end of the semester. I have two more minor tasks to finish this morning before I can guiltlessly (a) go to midday hot yoga [ED. This did not happen - I was interrupted in my post by the need to visit a friend in the hospital, and we ended up staying with his wife for a bit while she waited for scary tests to be conducted] and (b) write the luxuriantly copious blog post about summer writing thoughts that has been percolating for many days now. But before any of that, I think, some tabs to close....

A good Knausgaard interview by Scott Esposito (scroll down and click the link to open).

It really was bound in human skin! (More here and here.)

Documenting the last living Chinese women whose feet were bound in childhood.

Closing tabs

Via Sadie Stein, Sylvia Plath's drawings.

What have neutrinos done for you lately?

Claire Cameron interviews Sheila Heti at The Millions.  (Particularly interesting thoughts there on revision.)

Lauren Beukes's teenage novel-ideas notebook.

Lily Ladewig on publishing her first book of poems (and good tips here on first-book-writing in general).

Highlight of last week: gin and marmalade at Madam Geneva!

Postscript on preserves

The OED entry for 'marmalade' is unexpectedly poetic. (That link will only work if you are a Columbia affiliate.) The original marmalade: "a preserve consisting of a sweet, solid, quince jelly resembling chare de quince (see chare n.4) but with the spices replaced by flavourings of rose water and musk or ambergris, and cut into squares for eating"; and the figurative uses are lovely:

1592 G. Harvey New Let. in Wks. (1884) I. 280 Euery Periode of her stile carrieth marmalad and sucket in the mouth.

1607 T. Walkington Optick Glasse 53 The marmalade and sucket of the Muses.

And, on a different note:

1949 J. Steinbeck Russ. Jrnl. 179 A passage of clarinet marmalade played in unmistakable Benny Goodman style.

Bonus links: Orlando (The Marmalade Cat); and this post on The Frisky Housewife, which was the only one of the books we had, very much gives the flavor of it!

"A spoonful a day"

"I am not so sure that marmalade sales really are declining."

Also: what would Paddington have said?

Taste, colour and set

It is perhaps not quite blog-worthy, there is nothing absolutely and wildly over-the-top about it, but I was mildly fascinated by this FT piece about Britain's recent marmalade revival (site registration required) and the Marmalade Awards website.

(There is also a prize for Marmalade Cat of the Year!)

My fridge is absolutely bare, I threw out almost everything in fridge and cupboards when leaving the place for subletters in May (I believe this should be done periodically in any case, otherwise aged things pervade!); I believe the purchase of new jams and marmalades is in order...

Entirely unrelated: a rather fantastic Wikipedia biography of British doctor and mass-murderer John Bodkin Adams. (He was convicted, among other things, of the wonderfully named offense "lying on cremation forms"!) This link arrived from my father, who is reading D. R. Thorpe's biography of Harold Macmillan and delighting in the way Macmillan's life seemed to intersect with all sorts of unexpected figures...

Saw an excellent play last night with G. at the Flea Theater, British group Pants on Fire's adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Altogether charming! I think my favorite bits were Io's story (amazing use of gas mask and tap shoes to transform Io into a cow, and a beautifully written and performed song after her transformation back into a girl) and the song about Theseus's black sails, but both the material and the production are excellent: particularly inventive use of puppetry and modest sets to do all sorts of amazing and unexpected things. Lovely stuff!

And then we had a beautiful dinner at Petrarca, which has somehow by stealth and excellence become one of my favorite restaurants, so it was the rare occasion when dinner and the play were both exceptional; we shared a bottle of verdicchio and the amazing piatto rustico, a generous platter of prosciutto and salami and parmesan and so forth, then G. had spaghetti and meatballs and I had seared sesame-crusted tuna with asparagus. Topped off, though I was already rather full, by the Amarena: vanilla gelato with amarena cherries. It was delicious.

The face of marmalade

Paddington Bear signed to represent Robertson's Golden Shred.