Last week, you may have heard about the Greek-tragedy level death of two women, friends who got lost hiking in Roque Bluffs State Park in Maine. They were rescued, and got back into the minivan belonging to one of the two women, and promptly drove off a boat launch, into Englishman's Bay.
It was a foggy, rainy night, and they were probably quite shaken by the previous event. The story fascinates -- was death simply there to collect them, no matter what? The strange, sad details are reported in the Portland Press Herald.
We didn't come here to talk about that, but had to mention it on the off chance you missed it. For some reason, the story really sticks with us.
***
In far lighter news, linguist and writer Karen Stollznow wrote a piece for Scientific American's blog, about the language of the Sasquatch. That's right: The alleged language spoken by the crypto-zoological simian said to roam the remote mountain forests of North America.
Stollznow, being a scientist, demands extraordinary proof for the extraordinary claim. It's a gentle beat down, if such a thing can be, but still a surgically precise beat down.
The article led us to the vast sea of YouTube clips that contain portions, or the entirety, of the "Sierra Sounds recordings." Which, you may have guessed, are field recordings of the Sasquatch language in use, by a Sasquatch.
Read Stollznow's baloney-detecting exercise, 'cause it's fun. Fall down a well of Bigfoot videos on YouTube at your own peril.
Showing posts with label anthropology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anthropology. Show all posts
Monday, July 29, 2013
Friday, September 21, 2012
A Bedside Grimoire
As you've no doubt read, heard or seen by now, a historian of early Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School has gone public with the story of an aged piece of papyrus with Coptic script referencing Jesus and his wife.
It's an interesting item, a good story and, if legitimate, something that might force many Christian churches to rethink some of the tenets they've been following for about 1,500 years.
However we're going to use that tale of a lost text as a launching point to talk about another lost text recently resurfaced, The Long Lost Friend. It's a new translation of John George Hohman's Der lange verborgene Freund ('The Long-Hidden Friend') -- a book of practical magic originally published in 1820.
Hohman was an immigrant and published his book in America, with translations making the rounds quickly, as many in and out of the frontier took quickly to the book's German folk medicine and Native American herbal remedies, as well as the easily recited/copied incantations to keep witchcraft and evil at bay.
Friend is practical magic, don't forget. It's not some spell book with oogy verses in dead languages that will bring monsters forth from the bowels of Hell. The spells all apply directly to the things that any reasonable person in the still-wild United States would want to protect.
Friend was so popular for a time that both the medical establishment and clergy in the United States worked hard to discredit Hohman and his text. A major reason for their disdain was not just the medicinal recipies and magic that cut into their respective businesses, the doctors and preachers were defending themselves, as Hohman often derides both in the book.
Read Stefany Anne Golberg's review of Daniel Harms' translation of The Long Lost Friend. Her take casts Hohman's work as America's first (and finest?) self-help book. She might be right.
It's an interesting item, a good story and, if legitimate, something that might force many Christian churches to rethink some of the tenets they've been following for about 1,500 years.
However we're going to use that tale of a lost text as a launching point to talk about another lost text recently resurfaced, The Long Lost Friend. It's a new translation of John George Hohman's Der lange verborgene Freund ('The Long-Hidden Friend') -- a book of practical magic originally published in 1820.
Hohman was an immigrant and published his book in America, with translations making the rounds quickly, as many in and out of the frontier took quickly to the book's German folk medicine and Native American herbal remedies, as well as the easily recited/copied incantations to keep witchcraft and evil at bay.
Friend is practical magic, don't forget. It's not some spell book with oogy verses in dead languages that will bring monsters forth from the bowels of Hell. The spells all apply directly to the things that any reasonable person in the still-wild United States would want to protect.
Friend was so popular for a time that both the medical establishment and clergy in the United States worked hard to discredit Hohman and his text. A major reason for their disdain was not just the medicinal recipies and magic that cut into their respective businesses, the doctors and preachers were defending themselves, as Hohman often derides both in the book.
Read Stefany Anne Golberg's review of Daniel Harms' translation of The Long Lost Friend. Her take casts Hohman's work as America's first (and finest?) self-help book. She might be right.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Folks
"For You who loves the folklore" says the tagline on the music blog Rare World and Folkore Music. [Caps theirs. --ed.]
We figure that's us, so we dug in and oh boy, what a spread! Some of the download links are expired, and the posts are about as sporadic as The Typing Monkey's. But those complaints don't even register when there's so much there to explore.
If you don't loves the folklore, perhaps you are a bold and daring media consumer who enjoys listening outside of your comfort zone. Click, scroll, read, download, listen, repeat. The blog's contributors (Varvaras, apelsin and Folklore Maniac) are doing the Lord's work.
We figure that's us, so we dug in and oh boy, what a spread! Some of the download links are expired, and the posts are about as sporadic as The Typing Monkey's. But those complaints don't even register when there's so much there to explore.
If you don't loves the folklore, perhaps you are a bold and daring media consumer who enjoys listening outside of your comfort zone. Click, scroll, read, download, listen, repeat. The blog's contributors (Varvaras, apelsin and Folklore Maniac) are doing the Lord's work.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Shrunken Heads Are For Real
May got off to such a promising start. Traveling off the grid put us in strange states where the ghost of Howard Hughes danced on the wing of The Spruce Goose to a lopsided Mexican shuffle played by a laughing band of weirdos. And on a hot Saturday morning, Typing Monkey publisher S.L. Kreighton left a bit of himself in a hotel parking lot. We were all so frightened and entertained.
Never mind. We merge back onto the information superhighway's increasingly neglected backroads in order to bring you this piece about scientists analyzing the DNA of an alleged shrunken head, proving that said noggin is no longer alleged. It's an actual human head that's been shrunk.
As if we ever doubted it. For the time-strapped, here's a quotation from Gila Kahila Bar-Gal, one of the scientists who conducted the DNA examination:
"'During spiritual ceremonies, enemies' heads were carefully reduced through boiling and heating, in the attempt to lock the enemy's spirit and protect the killers from spiritual revenge.'"
[Photo is not the head they tested, but one kept in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Photo by Narayan k28, via WikiCommons.]
As if we ever doubted it. For the time-strapped, here's a quotation from Gila Kahila Bar-Gal, one of the scientists who conducted the DNA examination:
"'During spiritual ceremonies, enemies' heads were carefully reduced through boiling and heating, in the attempt to lock the enemy's spirit and protect the killers from spiritual revenge.'"
[Photo is not the head they tested, but one kept in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Photo by Narayan k28, via WikiCommons.]
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