Empress of the World » Asides

One of those obscure, overly dramatic posts

Sara — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:13:38 +0000

So you’re blithely going through your daily online reads, and suddenly, a post hits as though it fluttered down from the sky in a priority mail envelope addressed to you.

Never mind that the post’s author had no notion you’d respond this way. Regardless, the messages resonate: Knock it off. Get it together. Figure it out.

What’s it? Whatever you think it is.

Distilled to its essence

Sara — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:16:22 +0000

Via Dylan (in that a printout of this particular cartoon was on her desk at the studio): Angry Nostalgia.

Thank you, Robert Sergel.

Yes, even in the heartland

Sara — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:58:14 +0000

Our last day here in the Undisclosed Location, we go to a coffeehouse and overhear a conversation between the owner and a gentleman who turns out to be directing a production of South Pacific. Though of course I would not make any assumptions or ascribe to any stereotypes based solely on involvement in theater, the gentleman did, in fact, set off my gaydar.

More power to him.

And soon, we’ll be back home, where I would not consider overhearing that sort of conversation to be blogworthy.

Berne bears: idle curiosity

Sara — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:10:04 +0000

Through a long chain of link-clicking, I ran across a page about the bear pits of Berne, a tourist attraction of which I had previously been entirely unaware. Now I know that they’ve been in the city for hundreds of years, since bears are the city mascot, and I also know that there is now a movement to get them moved to a more humane setting.

But now I’m curious, and I can’t seem to find anything about the role of keepers over the centuries. I mean, in, like, 1890, were there people whose job it was to feed the bears, and muck out the bear pits? I assume there would’ve had to be, but who hired them? The city? If anyone happens to know, or would have a better idea where I might profitably look, that would be keen. I also saw a grisly mention of a guild that slaughtered “surplus” bears once a year, to be eaten as a delicacy, and I wonder if guild members and keepers were the same people?

(Yes, my reading is more than usually eclectic, here in the Undisclosed Location.)