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Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2005-09-16 - 8:55 a.m. The Poseidon Adventure I woke up laughing thanks to Kynny. I don�t remember the dream well enough to know what he said, but it was funny. I think it had something to do with alcohol. Let me explain. I was working on my Artisan entry for Chalice last night, for which I blame Lucia and Elishabeth, breaking my record of 16 years without entering an A&S competition. Forgive me, the artisan community for I shall confess. I don�t like A&S competitions and the intense concentration on them, which has come to our realm in the last five years, puzzles me. I originally thought it was the documentation that irritated me, but that�s not it. As an engineer, you learn systematically writing up your results makes you find the holes in them, which is why any week you read about me preparing for a review is a week fraught with panic as we fix the things forgotten. So, I keep a project journal. It�s not the judging or criticism. I hunt down critiques when I want them. (Note to self: make appointment with AoD for critiques on Roland�s Elizabethan before cutting out new suit. Um. Have to get sewing machine repaired first. That�ll give me time.) For some people, the competitions provide the motivation of a deadline, a venue for discussion an opportunity for demonstration and learning. I hear the excited chatter amongst the artisans, and I�m glad. For me, I just don�t enjoy them. I don�t enjoy laying art on a table, like a cross between a craft show and a Science fair. For me, it pierces the illusion we strive so desperately to create and drains the joy. I�d rather see art in context and motion � period food on the hospitality table, served on reproduction linens, with a proper ewer for washing up. Good armor with correct heraldic bearings flashing across the field in a charge. But I was getting to something funny about Kynny. For the theme of �Things for an Ocean Voyage,� I put together an entry of food from the Mary Rose. Among the background information I couldn�t use was the history of scurvy, that deadly lack of vitamin C that killed half of da Gama�s men and many of Columbus and was the scourge of the Age of Navigation. �� Finally, at the end of the eighteenth century it was accepted, by the British Navy at least, that a juice of citrus fruits was the only medicine that could conquer a disease that was killing more seamen than enemy action. The Admiralty decreed that a fixed amount of lemon juice should be issued daily to all sailers after their fifth or sixth week afloat, and stood by this decision to the tune of 1.6 million gallons of it in the period between 1795 and 1815. The mortality rate showed a gratifying steep decline. The lemon juice was usually mixed with the rum ration, whose issue was the highlight of the sailor�s day. After the capture of Jamica in 1615, rum, which remained sweet longer, had begun to replace the Navy�s beer in the West Indian waters, but a neat half-pintn a day proved too much for many of the men, especially when they were aloft in the rigging. In 1740, therefore, a certain Admiral Vernon � nicknamed �old Grog� from the old cloak of grogram cloth he wore in rough weather � formally introduced a diluted version. Subsequently, the grog issue became general in the Navy, and the lemon juice was added to it in 1795. In the mid-nineteenth century lime juice form the West Indies was substituted for lemon from the Mediterranean, an innovation viewed by many sailors with a jaundiced eye, especially when American seamen began to call them �limeys�. And in fact lime juice � which has considerably less vitamin C than lemon or orange � proved to be less effective against scurvy.� � Food in History. Reay Tannahill. I find it hysterical that the mix of rum and citrus we call Grog was named after an old Admiral�s coat, but then I�m random trivia woman. I�m sure this was what Kynny was commenting on when I woke up laughing. What did you say, man? I'm going to go put some lime in my diet Coke; let me know when I get back. � � � 
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