These lovely ladies are friends of mine from the last highschool I attended. I am lucky enough to still know and get to spend time with them.
Posts authored by leems
British Library uploads over a million historical images
Announcing a return
Yo duders. I know Levi Levi and I have been well nigh silent for a long time, but October approaches now and it is always my month of prolific posting. This year will be no different. Keep your eyes peeled for a special October drawing series and Levi Levi’s return to the now.
The Sin Eater
Our little bit of history today comes from the depths of my Evernote where I had saved an article by Meg Favreau on Table Matters about the custom of funeral cakes, and sin eaters. This reminded me of i09’s article “The Weird but True History of Sin Eaters” and then the BBC article about how the grave of Richard Munslow, the last known sin eater in the UK, had been recently (2010) restored.
It’s a kind of hapless research I have in my Evernote; collections of articles and links on a subject growing larger over years, never collated. Sin eaters would become outcasts, tainted in the public eye by the sins they had taken from the recently deceased. The custom usually includes eating and drinking bread and wine that had been passed over the dead. The sin eater was paid for their trouble, that of carrying the sins for the rest of their days, but also shunned.
The custom is sometimes tied to Leviticus, and thought to be a mutated practice of scapegoating, where humans and not goats are given the transgressions and cast out.
This custom alludes (methinkes) something to the Scape-goate in ye old Lawe. Leviticus, cap. xvi, verse 21, 22. “And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goate and confesse over him all ye iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fitt man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities, unto the land no inhabited: and he shall let the goat goe unto the wilderness.”
-Hartland, E.S. (1892) “The Sin-Eater.” Folklore. 3(2); 145-157.
But the practices of making one person a sacrifice for a whole community is very common. Wikipedia’s scapegoat discusses the Greek custom of casting out a crippled member of the community, especially when facing an immanent threat. Cultures all over the world have had traditions of sacrifice deep in their past, and though most of the world now shuns ritual killings, the tradition of sacrifice continues on in narrative, worship, and even politics.
Names for things and rituals may change a little, but I’m not really sure there ever will be a last sin-eater.
Etsy-Indie Comics Haul again
Okay, there are a couple in there that are not from Etsy, but Etsy is an excellent place to find excellent indie comics. And find I did…
As You Were, an anthology comic available through Silver Sprocket
Best Day Ever by Sammy Borras
Bunny Behavior and Tigris & Vulpes by Lindsey Green
Minutiae by Aijung Kim
Monster Heart mini comic from Brogan Coral Kingsley
Poor Mick from Kat Martin‘s Etsy shop
Werebears and Only Children Minicomic from the Werebears shop of Jennifer Barrett
Whisper Grass a side comic of the Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal by E.K. Weaver
Witchling by Renee Nault
Finally drawing again
I am drawing again. I had said I was, didn’t I? Well, I am.
I think I like requests the best–I always end up with something I wouldn’t draw normally. Richard of doomedmoviethon.com and Gyrojets wanted something for Friday’s concert so I drew him this.
If you are out and about on Friday night anywhere near Pegasus lounge in Tampa, you should stop by and see Gyrojets. They are the bombs.
Mapping a name
You ever spend a really long time just to get a visual, or organize a huge amount of information for your own personal digestion? And then you do nothing with it. Well, welcome to mine.
In the course of doing some genealogical research I started to wonder where my name-sake got her name, and then to also wonder about the popularity and the spread of the name LeEtta. And so I poured through the census and made a map of LeEtta movement from the 1860 census to the 1940 census in 40 year increments. It looks like we’re taking over the world, but really there are only 249 of 132 million people in 1940. That’s like one in half a million. 🙂
American Manifesto – Boing Boing
American Manifesto by Todd Thyberg via Boing Boing is a fabulous piece of thoroughly cited education. How can we hope to play our part in our country if we don’t know the facts? And how can we call it our country if we don’t play our part?
when pigs fly
It feels like an eternity already since I properly posted anything, especially a Levi Levi update. And sadly, I’m not ready to jump back in with two feet, yet, either.
I’ve hinted already, but we have bought our first house and it is currently sucking all our time and money away. Even so, it’s terribly exciting. Wrestling with thorny, overgrown bushes in the hot Florida summer sun doesn’t even make it less exciting.
Expect more and more posts on house and garden stuff inspired by my house and garden. Eventually, I might even manage a before and after slide show. Aren’t you excited?
Bechdel test rating movies
Because I’d never heard about this before and now that I have I cannot stop applying it whenever I am confronted with a movie preview: The Bechdel test:
To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.
And of course, a reminder:
“There are far too many films that pass the Bechdel test that don’t help at all in making society more equal or better, and lots of films that don’t pass the test but are fantastic at those things,” said Swedish film critic Hynek Pallas.
via Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating | World news | theguardian.com.
As an advertizement strategy, it’s pretty awesome. At first, I’d say that it shouldn’t be put in a position to shut out movies that don’t fit, though, it couldn’t do worse than any current rating system.
Librarians Against DRM | ReadersBillofRights.info
Recipe – more things on toast
I mentioned before about making things on toast for dinner. The distraction of looking for a house meant I only made two such meals before the mold came. Obviously, it’s been a while since that happened; I’ve been keeping this post in my drafts while buying, packing and moving. Yes. I have a house! And pretty soon, this blog will be replete with fix-its and design finishes…once I have a computer set up at home.
Anyway, back to the food. My husband and I love the taste of this meal, but I hate to cook it since simmering tomato sauce is so messy. If you are game, I suggest you try it: poached eggs in tomato sauce on toast. Here, with a side of steamed and buttered mustard greens.
I don’t really have a recipe for this. Just fill a pot with enough tomato sauce to poach the eggs. Add whatever seasoning you want. Drop eggs in simmering sauce and keep simmering until they are as hard as you like them. Ladle them on to toast and voila, you have a decadent tasting dinner.
All Known Health Frauds are, in Fact, Valid | But Seriously
seriously well written rant on something that needs to be ranted about: All Known Health Frauds are, in Fact, Valid | But Seriously.
Your email privacy
I am the kind of person who organizes the emails they want to keep into folders and saves them indefinitely. It’s nice to be able to search back through them when I’ve forgotten something. Are you that kind of person too?
If you are, I bet you’ve been functioning, as I have, with the delusion that this was a safe place to put your emails. That emails, like the post, are protected from data harvesting and warrantless snooping. The reality is that there are a lot of holes to email privacy. EFF explains: Deep Dive: Updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
dream library
I probably wouldn’t paint it muted shades of neon green and pink (I’m sure it didn’t look like that in Corel), but here is an idea I had for drawing up a dream library.