Spreading its leafy limbs
before the former Mansfield Town Hall is a tree of a non-native species that
once covered many of the hills and valleys of Connecticut—a black
mulberry. And almost directly across
Storrs Road on Route 195 bordering the Altnaveigh Inn stands a second, a white
mulberry. Two hundred years ago tens of
thousands of cultivated mulberry trees dotted the Connecticut landscape. Few have survived the ravages of time, the
harsh Connecticut climate, blight, and the foibles of mankind. Those that remain are relics of a strange
chapter in Connecticut’s history, one that featured a fabled fabric,
get-rich-quick dreams spun by promoters, hucksters, and swindlers, and, finally,
panic and ruin. It is the story of a
burgeoning but short-lived cottage industry that was unique in the young,
19th-century American nation. The story
begins with the mulberry tree and the silkworm, which is a type of caterpillar. The silkworm prefers a diet of mulberry
leaves. It produces a cocoon which, when
unraveled, can be spun into silk thread.
The process of silk production is called sericulture, and Connecticut, especially
Windham and Tolland Counties, was the epicenter of US raw-silk production. The Chinese discovered the secrets of
mulberry leaves, silkworms, and silk production 4,000 years ago and threatened
death to anyone who revealed those secrets.
These new threads, which had a greater tensile strength than metal
cable, could be spun into a luxurious fabric that was so desired that it opened
up trade across half the globe on the famous Silk Road. Eventually the secrets of sericulture spread
throughout Asia and Europe. Silkworms
were first imported to Virginia as early as 1613, but efforts to build
businesses around them in American colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina,
and Pennsylvania were only marginally successful. In 1734 the Connecticut Colonial Assembly
passed legislation offering financial incentives for silk growers. Two individuals ended up succeeding in
bringing silk production to Connecticut, where others had failed. One was Nathaniel Aspinwall, a
horticulturalist. In the 1750s Aspinwall
planted mulberry trees at a nursery he owned in Long Island and later in Mansfield and New
Haven, Connecticut. Aspinwall also
raised and distributed to customers the silkworm eggs needed to produce the
caterpillars and cocoons. Historians do
not make clear what caused the collapse in mulberry prices. The fall came after the general financial panic
of 1837, which had actually caused mulberry prices to soar as investors took
their cash and used it to buy more trees, which seemed a safer haven. Much of the blame has fallen on boosters who
downplayed the labor involved in silk production while over-inflating the
potential profits. Another factor was
that the multicaulis was
poorly equipped to weather the harsh winters of the northeastern United
States. Through 1839 prices fell at
alarming rates. Trees that at the
beginning of the year could fetch $1 to $1.25 by the end of the year could be
had for 2 to 4 cents. One auction of
30,000 multicaulis trees
that would have sold for $20,000 just a few years before now had no takers. Many nurserymen began burning the trees or
using them for compost. Bob Wyss Read much more and see graphics at https://connecticuthistory.org/connecticuts-mulberry-craze/
The central
nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and spinal cord. The brain is an important organ that controls
thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature,
hunger, and every process that regulates our body. The brain can be divided into the cerebrum,
brainstem, and cerebellum:
Cerebrum. The cerebrum (front of brain) is
composed of the right and left hemispheres, which are joined by the corpus
callosum. Functions of the cerebrum
include: initiation of movement,
coordination of movement, temperature, touch, vision, hearing, judgment, reasoning,
problem solving, emotions, and learning.
Brainstem. The brainstem (middle of brain) includes the midbrain, the
pons, and the medulla. Functions of this
area include: movement of the eyes and
mouth, relaying sensory messages (such as hot, pain, and loud), respirations,
consciousness, cardiac function, involuntary muscle movements, sneezing,
coughing, vomiting, and swallowing.
Cerebellum. The cerebellum (back of brain) is located at the back of
the head. Its function is to coordinate
voluntary muscle movements and to maintain posture, balance, and
equilibrium. Find other parts of the
brain described at https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/anatomy-of-the-brain
Langar is the communal meal shared by Sikhs and all
visitors to the gurdwara. Since the founding of the Sikh
community, langar has come
to be an important part of Sikh religious life.
After the service, no Sikh will leave without partaking of langar.
For Sikhs, eating together in this way is expressive of the equality and
oneness of all humankind. At the same time, it strengthens the Sikh sense of
community. Visitors and guests are readily and warmly included in the great
hospitality of the Sikh tradition. In
visiting a gurdwara one
will always be offered the sweet prashad which
is distributed in the sanctuary as the “grace” of the guru.
And in visiting at the time of a service, one will be offered the
entire langar meal. One of the most obvious signs of caste
inequality in traditional Indian society is the taboo against eating with those
outside one’s caste group, of a lower caste, or of a different religion. Rules for the sharing of food and water are
many, especially among high caste Hindus.
From the beginning, the Sikh gurus explicitly
rejected this inequality by asking that all Sikhs and all visitors to the
Sikh gurdwaras partake of
common food in the company of one another.
In the langar hall,
women and men, rich and poor, high and low sit together. The langar meal
thus assails the inner core of inequality and symbolizes a Sikh’s personal
rejection of prejudice. https://pluralism.org/langar-the-communal-meal
Gurdwara, (Punjabi:
“doorway to the Guru”) in Sikhism, is a place
of worship in India and overseas.
The gurdwara contains—on a cot under a canopy—a copy
of the Adi Granth (“First Volume”), the sacred scripture of
Sikhism. It also serves as a meeting
place for conducting business of the congregation and wedding and initiation
ceremonies. The more historically
important gurdwaras serve as centres of pilgrimage during
festivals. A communal dining hall (langar),
in which meals are prepared and served to the congregation, and frequently a
school are attached to the gurdwara. Every Sikh family endeavours to set aside one
room of the house for the reading of the Adi Granth, and that room
is also called a gurdwara.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/gurdwara
Every
year on “a Wednesday in mid-June,” the Royal
Society of Literature celebrates
the work and legacy of Virginia Woolf. In 2020, Dalloway Day falls on Wednesday, June 17th (the day after Bloomsday, if
you want to make a week out of it), and Lit Hub is proud to be part of the
festivities, which include online panel discussions, a writing workshop, a book
club, an aural walking tour and a BBC broadcast. You can see the full
program here, but below are a few
highlights, and if you’d like a handy list of all the books you’ll need from
the authors involved with the festivities, you can find
that here. https://lithub.com/join-lit-hub-the-royal-society-of-literature-in-celebrating-dalloway-day-on-june-17th/
Marmite, a spread made
with yeast extract, is now only being produced in a 250g size jar as a result
of brewers’ yeast being more difficult to get hold of, a message sent on the
company’s official account said on June 10, 2020. When asked by a
customer why larger 400g squeezy jars were hard to get hold of at the moment,
the firm replied: “Due to brewers yeast
being in short supply (one of the main ingredients in Marmite) supplies of
Marmite have been affected. Brewers slowed and stalled production when
pubs were forced to shut in an attempt to slow the Covid-19 pandemic. The twitter thread split lovers and haters of Marmite: “You hate to see it. Or love to see it,” wrote one. “Some good news at last,” wrote another. Another tweeted that this was
“Marmageddon”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/11/marmite-supplies-hit-by-covid-19-beer-brewing-slowdown-yeast “British beer sales fall to 20-year low due
to lockdown pub closures.”
Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract invented by German
scientist Justus von Liebig and
originally made in the United Kingdom. It
is a by-product of beer brewing and is produced by
Dutch-British company Unilever. Other similar products include the
Australian Vegemite (the name
of which is derived from that of Marmite), the Swiss Cenovis, the Brazilian Cenovit and the
German Vitam-R. Marmite has been manufactured in New Zealand
since 1919 under license, but with a different recipe, see "Marmite (New Zealand)".
That product is the only one sold as
Marmite in Australasia and
the Pacific, whereas elsewhere in the world the European version predominates. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown food paste with a distinctive, powerful
flavour, that is extremely salty. This
distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular
culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for
something that is an acquired taste or
tends to polarise opinions. Marmite is a commonly used ingredient in
dishes as a flavouring, as it is particularly rich in umami due
to its very high levels of glutamate (1960 mg/100g). The image on the front of
the jar shows a marmite, a
French term for a large, covered earthenware or metal cooking pot. Marmite was originally supplied in earthenware pots but since the 1920s has
been sold in glass jars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite
The U.K.
is experiencing a shortage of Marmite, the polarizing yeast-extract spread, due
to a lack of brewer's yeast, an ingredient now in short supply after pubs closed
down amid the coronavirus. Keep calm and carry on, Marmite lovers. Listen to a
short story with amusing music at
A THOUGHT FOR JUNE 17
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also
deprive me of the possibility of being right. - Igor Stravinsky, composer (17
Jun 1882-1971)
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2286
June 17, 2020
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