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By Anatoly Liberman

Tales that explain the origin of things are called etiological.  All etymologies are etiological tales by definition.  It seems that one of the main features of Homo sapiens has always been his unquenchable desire to get drunk.  Sapiens indeed!  The most ancient intoxicating drink of the Indo-Europeans was mead.  Moreover, it seems that several neighboring tribes borrowed the name of this drink from them (and undoubtedly the drink itself:  otherwise, what would have been the point of taking over the word?), for we have Finnish mesi, Proto-Chinese mit, and Japanese mitsu, allegedly modifications of Indo-European medu- or medhu-.  Being inebriated allowed one to converse with the gods; intoxication and inspiration were synonyms from early on.  We now have a different view of alcoholism and have reduced the sublime state to the dull legal formula “under the influence.”  But things were different in the spring of civilization.  One of the most memorable myths of the medieval Scandinavians is about a deadly fight for the mead of wisdom and poetry.

After a truce was made between two warring clans of gods (the cause of the war has not been discovered), they met to make peace, took a crock, and spat into it.  Saliva causes fermentation and has been used widely in old days for processes like the one being described here.  From the contents of the crock the gods created a homunculus called Kvasir, who turned out to be sober (!) and extremely wise: there was no question he could not answer.  He traveled far and wide and taught men wisdom.  The name Kvasir happens to be an almost full homonym of Slavic kvas (usually spelled, for no legitimate reason, kvass in English), a malt-based drink, one of whose indispensable ingredients is bread.  However, despite what some books state in a rather dogmatic way, the coincidence between Kvasir and kvas may be fortuitous.  Although not directly, kvas is related to Slavic words for “sour.”  Closer cognates mean “froth” and “cook; boil”; one of them is Latin caseus, the etymon of Engl. cheese.  In Germanic, Kvasir resembles verbs like Engl. quash and squash.  Both are usually traced to Old French, but similar-sounding and partly synonymous verbs, for instance, English squeeze and quench, are native, while Modern German quetschen, corresponding to Engl. quash, is a word of disputable etymology (perhaps native, perhaps from French).  Whatever product the gods obtained through fermentation, its base was first “crushed” or “squashed.”  Kvasir appears unexpectedly in a later myth connected with the capture of Loki; however, his life must have been short, because two dwarfs killed him.

In the world of Scandinavian myths we encounter gods, dwarfs, and giants.  Despite the associations these words carry to us, “an average giant” did not tower over “an average god,” whereas the dwarfs were not tiny.  Giants and dwarfs became huge and small in later folklore.  In Scandinavian myths, they were distinguished by their functions: the gods maintained order in the universe, the giants tried to disrupt it, and the dwarfs were artisans and produced all the valuable objects that allowed the gods to stay in power.  Most unfortunately, the myths of the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons have not come down to us, and only some traces of them can be reconstructed from popular beliefs, the evidence of place names, and the like.  But to continue with Kvasir.  Two malicious dwarfs called him aside for a word in private and killed him, after which they let his blood run into two vats and a kettle.  They mixed the blood with honey, the main sweetener then known, and it became the mead that

I just submitted this to Illustration Friday for their topic 'Swarm'. It is a watercolor on Liberte paper from a sketchbook 80 lb. cold press. The paints used were DaVinci and Winsor Newton. I have added texture and detail with pencil. The materials were what I had on hand not a preference and welcome finding out other peoples experience and preferences of materials.

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
_ William Blake

Hunter and Gregory Blain, the beekeepers I interviewed the other day sent me a bear-shaped container of the honey from their hive! Click here to read the interview.

It tastes amazing! If you want to really treat yourself, make vanilla iced teas with Bigelow French Vanilla tea and one Tbs of honey. Add a few drops of pure vanilla extract. Yum!

Thanks Hunter and Gregory!

1. Do you know what is the most beautiful thing in my eyes… the reflection of yours.
2. NEVER say NEVER, but say that you love me FOREVER and EVER.
3. I hope you think of me each night before you fall asleep.
4. My heart beats to the rhythm of our love.
5. Love is what I feel when I see you beside me.
6. If you were ice cream, I would melt you with the heat of my love.
7. When you gaze at the stars remember me, for in each one is a kiss for thee.
8. I would ride a rocket to the stars, to be with you when you are far.
9. I was looking for an angel, but I suddenly stopped when you flew into my life.
10. If heaven is full of angels like you, I would ride an air balloon to meet you.

1. Do you know what is the most beautiful thing in my eyes… the reflection of yours.
2. NEVER say NEVER, but say that you love me FOREVER and EVER.
3. I hope you think of me each night before you fall asleep.
4. My heart beats to the rhythm of our love.
5. Love is what I feel when I see you beside me.
6. If you were ice cream, I would melt you with the heat of my love.
7. When you gaze at the stars remember me, for in each one is a kiss for thee.
8. I would ride a rocket to the stars, to be with you when you are far.
9. I was looking for an angel, but I suddenly stopped when you flew into my life.
10. If heaven is full of angels like you, I would ride an air balloon to meet you.

Image via Wikipedia

Do you have a problem with sex? Perhaps you need to see a sex therapist. After a few sessions, you might become a new person. Here are fifteen fortune cookie sayings from sex therapists:

1. At work, at play, and in the bed, life has its ups and downs.
2. Keep your two girlfriends away from going to the same restaurant unless you like to live your life dangerously.
3. Remember to keep your thoughts clean and your sheets clean at the same time.
4. Go to your grocery store and buy a lot of vegetables, particularly cucumbers. You are going to have a very exciting evening tonight.
5. Two’s company, but four makes for an extremely stimulating night.
6. Despite all your cosmetic surgeries, your heart is still true. Time to bring pleasure to your new body parts.
7. It is difficult to have a moist erotic kiss if your lips are severly chapped.
8. Condemn violence, but use a condom when having sex.
9. If you have an affair, make it count for everything you got because if you are discovered, you will lose everything you got.
10. Sex is like fireworks. It can be very explosive, but can also have its duds.
11. You cannot substitute pills for love. However, they do have interesting side effects.
12. Your passion will flow like a raging river. You are under a flood watch tonight.
13. A little music and a little food will put your partner in the right mood. But a little gas will swiftly burn out the flames of desire.
14. Give your honey a great big hug. Sorry, your honey has the flu. Now your hug has given you the bug.
15. Embrace your lover, but never lock braces together.

Image via Wikipedia

Do you have a problem with sex? Perhaps you need to see a sex therapist. After a few sessions, you might become a new person. Here are fifteen fortune cookie sayings from sex therapists:

1. At work, at play, and in the bed, life has its ups and downs.
2. Keep your two girlfriends away from going to the same restaurant unless you like to live your life dangerously.
3. Remember to keep your thoughts clean and your sheets clean at the same time.
4. Go to your grocery store and buy a lot of vegetables, particularly cucumbers. You are going to have a very exciting evening tonight.
5. Two’s company, but four makes for an extremely stimulating night.
6. Despite all your cosmetic surgeries, your heart is still true. Time to bring pleasure to your new body parts.
7. It is difficult to have a moist erotic kiss if your lips are severly chapped.
8. Condemn violence, but use a condom when having sex.
9. If you have an affair, make it count for everything you got because if you are discovered, you will lose everything you got.
10. Sex is like fireworks. It can be very explosive, but can also have its duds.
11. You cannot substitute pills for love. However, they do have interesting side effects.
12. Your passion will flow like a raging river. You are under a flood watch tonight.
13. A little music and a little food will put your partner in the right mood. But a little gas will swiftly burn out the flames of desire.
14. Give your honey a great big hug. Sorry, your honey has the flu. Now your hug has given you the bug.
15. Embrace your lover, but never lock braces together.

I've become horribly addicted to these chocolate dipped peanut brittle snacks. Delicious. Had to give the last lot of them away to a friend before I turned into one!

Happy 2009 to everyone!

Peanut Brittle Card at Zazzle

Those of you who have been following the saga of The Bees over at the birdchick blog (http://www.birdchick.com/labels/beekeeping.html) will know that of the two hives we started out with, which we called Olga and Kitty, Olga has thrived, while Kitty did so well that she swarmed in late summer and took off to see the world. We got a new queen, but the remaining bees in Kitty never got her population back up in time for winter.

Which meant that when it got really cold this year, Olga had enough bees to keep the hive warm and Kitty simply didn't. I went out in January and noticed that the snow had melted around Olga, she was removing her dead and, on warm days, bees were nipping out and pooping yellow in the snow, whereas Kitty was just a green box with nothing going on.

So I did what anyone would do. I sent a few thousand dead bees to Lisa Snellings, to make into art.

A couple of days ago I noticed that someone -- probably a raccoon -- had tried to get in to Kitty, and clean out the honey, which meant it was time to do something. I called Sharon, who was down with hellflu, and got the greenlight from her.

Lorraine and I moved the empty kitty hive into the garage.

And then I had to decide what to do with the honey in Kitty. I went onto the Internet to find out if there was anything I could do that didn't involve buying centrifugal honey extractors, and learned that if it was honey I wanted, a bucket and some cheesecloth would do just fine...



So I mashed up the leftover comb and honey into a bucket, tipped the resulting scary-looking gloop into the cheesecloth at the top of another bucket...



Then nipped out to the garage every three or four hours to add more gloop as the honey trickled through the cheescloth into the bottom bucket.



And this morning Lorraine came over and we took the cheesecloth off bucket #1 and poured the honey into jars. Astonishingly, the cheesecloth had done its job, and we had wax and crud on the outside of the bucket and clear honey on the inside.



There's probably the same amount again still in the garage right now trickling through the cheesecloth into buckets.

The honey is wonderful. It tastes like wildflowers and spring. I'd rather have Kitty out there filled with bees (although the Kitty hive that swarmed is undoubtedly fine, in a hollow tree somewhere), but the honey's good too.

...

The Graveyard Book is pretty much ready to be copy-edited now. I was scared that my editors in the UK and the US would point out somewhere I'd messed up that would need a whole new chapter (much as Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury did when she read Coraline in manuscript and said, "It needs a chapter where she confronts the Other Father, who in what you've given me just goes offstage and stays off," and I said "oh Bugger it does, doesn't it?" and had to go and write it. I mean, I knew about the scene in the cellar. I just thought I could get away with not having written it.).

But nothing like that happened. Sarah's biggest concern was a scene where a fifteen-year old girl accepts a ride from a stranger (obviously, she shouldn't have, but Sarah wanted it to be convincing that she did) and Elise only had small points -- the biggest change was that she wanted a sentence removed that spelled out how ghouls got their names, which I'd put in slightly under protest because a few people had been confused as to whether the small, leathery corpse-eaters were the real Duke of Westminster, 35th President of the United States, Bishop of Bath and Wells, or not, and I was happy to see it go away again.

I got an email today from Diana Wynne Jones saying "It is FABULOUS, WONDERFUL, TRIFFIC. One of your best! I love it," which is better than gold and rubies (and if Diana doesn't like something, she tells me). Jon Levin at CAA, my long-suffering movie agent, is starting to fend off the phone calls as people call him wanting to see it, and we have to decide who we're showing it to, which is a good problem to have.

Everything's sort of accelerated right now. The book comes out in six months (30 Sept in the US, a month later in the UK), and there's not really much time for the normal routes of book promotion.

I'll see if we can get a countdown to publication date timer for the front page of the website. I don't think I've had one of those since American Gods.

I have had to lobby this week to have the IT people that manage the computer filtering at the school I work with to give adults access to MySpace. In fact, I don’t even know if any of the adults that come to computer drop-in time at the hich school ever even try to access MySpace, but I know if they try, they can’t.

The larger problem is that the filtering software they use to keep kids off of a ton of different sites during the school day (Surf Control, if it matters) behaves … erratically. I have computer logins specifically for my adult students and every now and again I go to help them do something and find that Google is blocked. Not Gmail, just plain old Google.com. So I call the IT people and ask them to fix it and they usually do. However, since I actually need to be able to access sites like Google during my evening classes, we’ve reached a compromise where they turn the filter off between 3 (after school) and 8 pm. However, they also track all the traffic that goes through the network during this time. They noticed, they said, that people were accessing MySpace. The implication was that 1) MySpace is against the rules and 2) MySpace has no value whatsoever and 3) even adults don’t have the right to use the computer networks to access social software sites.

So, I went to work and explained that the adults who come to drop-in time shoudl pretty much have the right to look at whatever they want, that MySpace is fine — I hadn’t been looking at MySpace but I had a page on MySpace that I might want to look at — and that the reports of MySpace’s dangers have bee greatly overrated. Read the article. Fewer teens are receiving unwanted online solicitations than they were in 1999. Despite this, we get laws like DOPA. That’s lousy.