Tuesday, January 17, 2012

History of Wind

Here's a casually tossed-off bit from the introduction to NATIVE AMERICAN FOOD PLANTS: AN ETHNOBOTANICAL DICTIONARY: "People have died from eating apple pits; 'poisoned apple' is redundant." WHAT? I think I've heard something like that before but I didn't pay attention. Anyway, watch out! Here is a funny use of an exclamation point in the introduction: "in a number of cases it is reported that the berries were eaten raw!" Leafing through the book I learned how the Rappahannock made beer from persimmons and that there is a plant called owlsclaws: "Roots used as a chewing gum." A panel from a Donald Duck comic I was reading last night showed Donald reading a book called HISTORY OF WIND. Here's the very panel, though the title is left out - probably because it's from that Danish Carl Barks site. Speaking of which, I also read in the introduction to my Donald Duck book about how Barks was tormented in his 90s by the "Carl Barks Studio" which was really just "a couple who was hired to take care of Barks in his twilight years" but instead they treated him like dirt and forced him to constantly draw new pictures of Donald Duck for them to sell - like a sweatshop! I'm sorry I told you about that. Sometimes life has sad parts. He got away from them when he was 97 and met some nicer people and lived a couple more years and was happy so okay.