Maculate
Verb. To spot, stain or soil.
Adjective. Spotted or blotched; stained or impure.
Hence immaculate: unspotted, pure, undefiled.
According to the OED the first usage is in a legal roll from 1432-50, shortly followed by Caxton in 1481. Sadly maculate is now confined to medical and zoological usage.
The Panther (or Rusty-Spotted) Genet (Genetta maculata)
Just found this on the intertubes. Exactly my sentiments …
Friday 3 May is World Press Freedom Day, which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.
Originally proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993 it has been organised annually on 3 May by UNESCO.
World Press Freedom Day serves as an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom: in dozens of countries around the world publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered. It is a date to encourage and develop initiatives in favour of press freedom and to assess the state of press freedom worldwide. It also serves as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom.
There’s more on the UNESCO website at www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/world-press-freedom-day/.
May is also Local and Community History Month.
The aim of the month is to increase awareness of local history, promote history in general to the local community and encourage people to participate.
You probably think that your local area is dull and boring with no history, but this is unlikely to be true. Almost everywhere in Britain is at least close to an ancient village or town, and a surprising number of places had something interesting going on.
There may well have been a manor house. What is the history of your local church — although it may be less than 200 years old, is it on the site of an earlier church? Was there a lost monastery or a royal deer park?
Just as an example, I was brought up in what is now a fairly dull, northern suburb of London; but I lived very close to the site of the Elizabethan Theobalds Palace (of which fragments still remain, see above) and to Waltham Abbey. Where I live now once had a trotting track, which was one of the earliest speedway tracks in the country — but, despite the layout still being visible in the modern roads, no-one seems to know!
So who knows what you will find out about your local area? The fun is in not knowing, and of finding out. It is like a treasure map of local community secrets.
Activities happen across the UK and include trips, library exhibitions and local lectures. It is a great way for groups to highlight local history and for local people to get involved.
Local and Community History Month is organised by the Historical Association and there is a database of activities on their website at www.history.org.uk/resources/general_resource_1567_55.html.
This week’s photograph is another from our 2010 break in Rye. This is a clump of Sea Kale (Crambe maritima) which grows everywhere across the shingle at Rye Harbour and on Dungeness. It is native to Europe growing along the coasts from the Atlantic as far east as the Black Sea. As you’ll guess from the name it’s related to cabbage and sometimes grown as a vegetable as well as an ornamental plant.
Sea Kale
Rye Harbour, August 2010
May is British National Asparagus Month, although to be honest it looks as if everything is 2-3 weeks late this year due to the awful weather over the preceding 12 months.
Asparagus is native to Europe, and while not everyone’s favourite vegetable, we’ll be eating it several times a week during the local season. But it does have lots of health benefits; it’s a great source of fibre and is rich in vitamins A, B and C as well as folic acid. And there are lots of exciting recipes to try.
When buying asparagus choose firm but tender stalks with good colour and closed tips. Asparagus soon looses its flavour and tenderness so it is best eaten as fresh as possible. Before cooking rinse it in cold water and remove the woody ends of the stalks. Boil, or preferably steam, it until just tender (about 5 minutes) and eat with a knob of butter, maybe some parmesan cheese, and crusty bread. Or try it in a stir-fry, cooked and cooled in salad, or quickly cooked and tossed with some olive oil and pasta.
Asparagus comes in different styles: green, purple or white; thicker or thinner. The thinner green stalks, called sprue, are our favourites for both flavour and tenderness, although this isn’t the received wisdom.
There’s more on British asparagus lots of recipe ideas at www.british-asparagus.co.uk.
Another Glasbergen cartoon this week. I can think of a number of friends to whom this should be dedicated …
It’s a long time since we’ve had an instalment in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.
These choice dwellings are is in Acton Vale, in West London. The photo flatters them — in real life they’re far more picturesquely scrofulous!
Another in our series of quotes which have amused or interested me recently …
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
[Oscar Levant]
Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at.
[Jimmy Demaret]
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
[William Ralph Inge]
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.
[Bruce Cockburn]
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
[Gustave Flaubert]
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
[Henry Adams]
[I]f everyone could just increase the openness and truthfulness of their sexual communication, or their communication about sex and sexuality even a little bit, it would create a great big change: a big change in each person’s own life, a big change in our world as a whole.
[Heather Corinna in It’s My Birthday: What I Want Is For You To Tell the Truth at Scarleteen]
At last, I’m not the only one saying it!
Our freedoms and privileges in a liberal democracy are ultimately guaranteed by the willingness of the state to use violence to protect them.
[Stephen Batchelor, quoted in More Thoughts on the Boston Bombings at Hardcore Zen]
Just think about that for a minute!
[C]ome either with arguments and demonstrations and bring us no more Texts and authorities, for our disputes are about the Sensible World, and not one of Paper.
[Galileo Galilei, Dialogue On Two World Systems]
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
[Leonardo da Vinci]
While a seaman might survive the suction and swallow, his arrival in a sperm whale’s stomach would seem to present a new set of problems. (I challenge you to find a more innocuous sentence containing the words sperm, suction, swallow and any homophone of seaman.)
[Mary Roach; Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal in a section on, inter alia, Jonah and the whale]
Zaftig
Of a woman: plump, curvaceous, ‘sexy’.
Full-bosomed.
Having a full, shapely figure.
From the Yiddish zaftik, juicy.
The first use recorded by the OED is in 1937.
