The Ironist
ISSN 2817-7363
Differing Perspectives
Forgotten Heroes #3 – Rudolf Rutabaga
“Carpe rutabaga folia!” - Horace, Odes 1.11 (The cruel mocking of rutabagas by carving them into Jack O’Lanterns, practiced in Ireland and Scotland) Rutabagas, and their cousins, white, red, and purple-top turnips, are a generous-hearted, kind and forgiving root...
Forgotten Heroes #2 – Juana the Tamale
Today we tell another sad tale of famous foods and vegetables left to compost. Juana was a Soladera Tamal of the Mexican Revolution, 1910 – 1920, and her Herculean strength and invincibility so frightened her enemies that they erased all memory of her – even changing...
Forgotten Heroes #1 – Pusillanimous Parsnip
Parsnips were so valuable Emperor Tiberius permitted Germania to provide parsnips as tribute starting in AD 4. Major languages adopted words from parsnips.
Smile!
We need more humor. It is hard keeping paper money dry when you live in the water. That is why I always kept my lari¹ in coins. Coins don’t get soggy. I think that is why American sturgeons switched to credit cards and then many got themselves into so problems with...
Ramblings #1 – At the Limehouse Cut
William Morris, Eleanor Marx, George Bernard Shaw et al. gave speeches nearby I am sitting on a wooden bench by the Limehouse Cut, the oldest canal in London, built in 1770. It is a Sunday morning, and there are only a few passers-by on Commercial Road that crosses...
We Need More Insouciance
Flt. Lieut. Peter Guy Scotchmer next to his damaged Typhoon after returning from an attack on an E-boat. Today, we read and hear not only about wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and of impending wars, but of riots and the threats of riots in many countries....
Gordon of Khartoum
An overdue retrospective Major General Charles George Gordon, CB, 1833-1885 The Victorian Age was an idealistic age, beginning with the might of the Royal Navy breaking the thralldom of slavery outside the British Empire. There was a dawning acceptance of Darwin’s...
A Culture of Reticence
The past is another country. They do things differently there. – L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between (A mosaic from Hadrumetum, in Tunisia, an important pre-Carthage Phoenician city, which depicts Aeneas surrounded by Clio, (history), and Melpomene (tragedy). This...
The Luring of Children
A Bookseller’s stall in Kutaisi, Georgia Now the ‘Luring of Children’ is a provocative title for an article in a non-political periodical like The Ironist. It comes from a picture, (above), that I took in Georgia (the country), recently, at a bookseller’s stall in the...