crooked house

Maud Newton on Victorian Children and Forbidden Fruit

"Here child, give me that apple before it poisons you."

Maud has been reading about Bertrand Russell and discovered this passage in his autobiography:

I remember an occasion at lunch when all the plates were changed and everybody except me was given an orange. I was not allowed an orange as there was an unalterable conviction that fruit is bad for children. I knew I must not ask for one as that would be impertinent, but as I had been given a plate I did venture to say, ‘a plate and nothing on it’. Everybody laughed, but I did not get an orange.

Apparently, though, Russell ate a lot of stolen crabapples, which is probably why he didn't suffer from rickets. (He did, however, suffer from guilt.)

Carrot Lobster

This image arrived in an email called "Lobster for Vegetarians and Poor People." Around here, where lobster fishing is an industry, lobster is for poor people, or at least it used to be. Kids used to be embarrassed to have to take it to school in their lunch boxes.

One Boy, Sans Tonsils and Adenoids

He looked so peaceful, for a few hours. And now, even though he's on morphine, it's very, very hard work to keep him in even a seated position for any length of time. (He's supposed to on bedrest for a week.)

Scaling Buildings in Paris

Those crazy Parisians -- the latest thing is scaling buildings. Well, looking as if you are. This is an art installation by Buenos Aires-based artist Leandro Erlich -- that's a giant mirror and the people are actually climbing all over that facade on the floor. See more photos on My Modern Met.

Sandwich Artist

From top to bottom: a Mondrian sandwich, a Pollock one, O'Keefe, and Hirst. There are more at Low Commitment Projects. Via Max Clarke on facebook.

Kasha

Vivi likes kasha!

When I was little, my mom used to do a Slovak finger play that involved "kasha" or porridge. I can't remember the exact words and I certainly can't read Slovak but I think it might have been this one -- it was a bit like "This Little Piggy," in that it involved the adult lightly gripping, with her forefinger and thumb, each of the fingers of the child's hand as each line was recited. After the last line, during which the littlest finger was gripped, the adult's fingers ran up the child's arm and tickled him or her under the chin:

The mother mouse was cooking porridge,
In that colourful pot,
To this one she gave a little on his spoon,
To this one she gave a little in his bowl,
To this one she gave a little on his plate,
And to that one she gave some on his wooden spoon.
But she did not give any to the small one,
Cause there was none left.
So she sent him to the pantry to eat some jam.

Apparently the word kasha, in Eastern European cultures, refers to any type of porridge, which is a dietary staple there at least a thousand years old. In American English, the word kasha usually refers to buckwheat groats and buckwheat was certainly one of the oldest kinds of  cereals used to make porridge in Eastern Europe.

As a result of trying to eat much more healthily here in the crooked house, we've been shopping more often in the organic section of the grocery store, which is where I came across a packet of organic kasha, the roasted buckwheat kernel kind. Although we ate a number of Slovak dishes when I was growing up, I'd never tried this. Vivi and I whipped up a pot this morning, and ate it with a spoonful of honey and some milk. It was, suprisingly, delicious! (As the very healthy-looking, slightly strange-smelling grain boiled away in the pot I was already mentally going through the list of words I expected to use to describe its taste -- they included "terrible," "awful," "no good," "very bad," and, of course, "yuck." I was astonished to be wrong.) We will have to try some of the many, many, many other recipes for kasha -- sweet or savoury; breakfast, lunch, or dinner; main or side -- found here.

Pretty word, too, isn't it? Kasha. I expect a celebrity will use it as a name for a baby any day now.

Winner of the When I Was Small Giveaway

And the winner of last Monday's When I Was Small giveaway here on crooked house is Amanda. Congratulations Amanda! (The winner was chosen by randomizer.org.)

Walk Off the Earth: Someone That I Used to Know

Fun video, pretty song by a Burlington-based band that appears to perform mostly covers on youtube. It went viral last week.

Snow Day

Not much school this week for residents of the crooked house. First there was the annual twenty-four-hour stomach flu vomit-a-thon on Wednesday, then the early lunch-time dismissal on Thursday due to an impending snow storm, and now school is cancelled today while they clean up the streets. We just made the obligatory snowman. He looks like he is bleeding because we tried to use red smarties for his mouth but they proved to be too irresistible and had to be eaten, leaving nothing but red dye smears across the snow. We replaced them with uncooked rotini noodles, which aren't as palatable.

Nothing says "fun" like a giant fake smile.

See, she actually does have a normal face.

"Ah yes, the 2010s," future photography historians will say, "when the likes of hipstamatic made even joyous childhood activities such as the making of snow angels look bleak and ominous."

The angry birds are quite pissed off about it. Well, the red one is. The green pig is mildly annoyed, the blue bird, concerned.

 

Hidden Mothers

In the early days of portrait photography, small children were often photographed while sitting in the arms of their mothers, who were completely covered by a blanket. Later the ghostly lump of the mother would be cropped out of the photo by a mat. These Hidden Mother pictures are highly sought after by collectors today. It seems that even before the proliferation of unrealistic images of women in the media, moms didn't want their pictures taken.

Look here and here for more of these strange photographs. Via A Cup of Jo.