This is not Los Angeles, but it is November 2019, the month and the year Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (US, 1982) takes place. The film and its soundtrack, by Vangelis, made a strong first impression on me. Several versions have been released over the years, including the director’s 2007 Final Cut. Just another science fiction movie for some, it truly is more than a masterpiece for me. (more…)
The threat of the Asian hornet, and more notably, the environmental impact of pesticides have surely raised public consciousness of the dangers of bee mortality and the deadly consequences of their extinction to the planet.
In connection with bees and beekeeping, let us review a former custom, vanished sometime between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, according to which house bees were to be told of the death of their keeper. We are of course talking about a time when most farmsteads kept honeybees.
The smell of roasted chestnuts shall soon fill the air as countless vendors take to the streets of villages, cities and towns. A cone of a dozen chestnuts for as much as three euros!
Now a favourite treat for cold, dark autumn and winter afternoons, chestnuts were a staple of the traditional Basque diet. And their consumption still prevailed among other nuts and dried fruits until half a century ago. (more…)
Historically, save for exceptional cases, women have been relegated to the private domain of the household. Their duties included the activation of the symbolic family grave in church, which was in effect conceived as an extension of the house itself.
Nonetheless, there have been a wide range of trades and occupations away from the homestead mostly performed by women, though often considered secondary. To name but a few: midwives, seamstresses, schoolteachers, marketeers, milkmaids…; and among others, particularly in coastal localities, net makers, errand girls at port, fish sellers and clam diggers. (more…)