Currently waiting for Mr. C to get back from Heathrow. So, I can’t really focus on anything.
This has been a pretty disruptive length of trip anyway, not quite a week. Just about enough time to start settling into some sort of routine–and then oops time to change again 😩 But, I will definitely be glad to have him back.
I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.
When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day.
Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.
Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.
Makes me happy to see people learn about the culture of my country 😀
Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.
Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.
Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume Thirty-Four: Sunflower. Growing in full sun to part shade in a variety of habitats – in open woodlands, floodplain forests, and thickets and along forest margins and roadsides – sunflowers (Helianthus) add a lovely yellow pop of color to the dull greens of Appalachia’s summer foliage. Over a dozen sunflower species inhabit Appalachia’s woods, and where their ranges overlap, interspecific hybridization complicates identification. A good basic guide to identification can be found here. But all species of this clumping, perennial herb share certain basic characteristics in common, including composite flowerheads consisting of yellow ray florets surrounding a gold to reddish-brown central crown of tubular disk flowers. Although the common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is most valued and familiar as a commercial crop, many species of sunflowers have long been used for medicinal and culinary purposes. In fact, widespread use of sunflowers for medicine and food by Native American tribes has made it difficult to determine the original ranges of some species and has contributed to their naturalization in areas outside of their native ranges. The sunflower species most often found in North-Central West Virginia include: woodland sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus); thinleaf sunflower (Helianthus decapetalus); hairy sunflower (Helianthus hirsutus); pale-leaved sunflower (Helianthus strumosus); giant sunflower (Helianthus giganteus); and Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus).
Broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) sprouts from a shallow inlet along the Monongahela River. The starchy tuber of this plant was an important food source for Native Americans. It’s also popular with ducks and muskrats. Not surprisingly, one of its common names is duck potato.
Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume Thirty-Six: Ironweed. Another oddball member of the Asteraceae family, ironweed (Vernonia) produces somewhat flattened, composite flowerheads consisting of numerous purple disk florets; however, they lack the ray florets typical of daisies and asters. The five-petaled disk flowers are shaped like flared tubes and attract a wide variety of long-tongued bees and butterflies. The plant’s alternate leaves are lanceolate, deeply-veined, and serrated along the margins. Two species of ironweed are commonly found in Central Appalachia: tall ironweed (Vernonia gigantea) and New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis). Ironweed is so named because of its tough central stalk, which which turns purplish-green as it matures. The tough, wiry nature of the plant’s stalk achieves allegorical relevance in the title of William Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Highly adaptable to a variety of growing conditions (from full sun to part shade in dry to moist soils), this sturdy perennial herb is at home in old fields, disturbed areas, roadsides, thickets, and forest margins and often clumps together with its old pals Joe-Pye Weed and wingstem to form colorful purple, lavender, and yellow stands in late summer.
Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume Thirty-Seven: White Snakeroot. If looks can kill … then this is one dainty late summer bloomer worth getting to know. White settlers were frequently afflicted by milk sickness after consuming milk from cows that had fed on white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima); Nancy Hanks Lincoln died after drinking milk tainted by the plant’s deadly toxin. Today, modern dairy practices have made milk sickness a rare occurrence, but cows are still known to go belly-up after grazing on this late summer beauty. Native Americans, who were a bit wiser to this plant’s medicinal power, made a decoction from its roots to treat rattlesnake bites (thus the plant’s common name). Although white snakeroot is superficially similar in appearance to common boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), these closely related members of the Asteraceae family are easily distinguished by their foliage; white snakeroot’s leaves are opposite, broad at the base, and attached at the stalk by a stem, while boneset’s leaves are narrower, wrinkled, and perfoliate (they appear to clasp the stalk). White snakeroot produces flattened clusters of fuzzy, white disk flowers (minus ray florets) in late summer to early fall and will continue to bloom up to the first frost of the season. Although this perennial herb’s preferred haunt is partly-shaded, slightly mesic open woods, it adapts to sunnier, drier habitats, such as disturbed areas, meadows, and pastures.
One article details that he is doing more, and more again, of the same fascist appeals he usually makes. The Washington Post article sees an escalation beyond trump’s harping repetition, and makes some persuasive points.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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