Author: christinestaffa

My life's journey has taken me from the streets of New York, up the Hudson Valley, to a little goat farm under Vermont's highest mountain.

Stitch Fix Summer 2019: Item 5 of 5

Categorizable as a sundress, but not a milligram of cotton in it.  This is poly.  I would not wear it in a casual way; as the poly would make it uncomfortable during summer weather; it is too sexy for the office, and I have maybe one occasion per year where I want to be dressy outside of work, and said occasion may or may not happen on a hot summer day.  I would never wear this.  I love it.  But I would never wear it.  I already have other things I might wear on the 0.5 hot summer days per year I want to dress up.  Adieu, lovely little dress.

Stitch Fix Summer 2019: Item 4 of 5

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Tee-shirt dress.  This fix, I asked for shorts, and cotton sundresses.  This material is majority but by no means entirely cotton.  It is also not a sundress.  Xopher said the pattern reminded him of Ernie, as in Ernie & Bert.  I would never wear this.  I have several times bought Stitch Fix items outside of my zone, that I strongly suspected I would never wear; told myself to stretch a little, start wearing something different.  After one time, I never wear the thing again.  So I told myself I have to learn to say no, be realistic.  So this one is going back.

Nieuw Belgium

Here’s something Xopher found a few years ago: a Dutch map of Nieuw Belgium from 1682:

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(The words that follow are his.)

There are two fronts of exploration shown here, both based on water. One is from the south, the other from the Northeast. From the south one finds the Hudson and Connecticut rivers; from the Northeast, the Saint Lawrence and its tributaries.

The year was 1682; the Marine chronometer would not be invented for another eighty years. Distances east and west could only be estimated by travel times. And it’s a long, long way from Cape Cod to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence.

The result is that the bounds of Vermont, the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain, are both shown on the map, but *in the wrong order*. From this we can conclude that no European explorers had yet journeyed between the two.

If you had said that you had come from a land east of Meer de Irocoisen and west of the Versche Rivier, people would say, there is no such place!

 

Book Corner 2019.26

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The Way We Eat Now by Bee Wilson

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An extended rant on everything you could possibly find wrong with, well, the way we eat now.

I didn’t really learn anything, except a lot of Britishisms. “Clingfilm” for plastic wrap. “Veg” for vegetables – much preferable to the babyish “veggies” we say in this country.

But anyway, lack of balance really bothered me, more in the beginning of the book than the end. For example, passing rants about increasing alcohol consumption – but a broad swipe like that has no meaning; alcohol consumption has to be the most varied of all food & drink intake habits across time and culture. There are cultures where alcohol has no traditional basis and was never heard of centuries ago; there are cultures where wine is a daily drink. There are American subcultures who are teetotalers; while colonial America was apparently drunk on hard liquor throughout the days of the founding fathers. There’s no mention of any of this.

It got more enjoyable and balanced towards the end. For example, she’s actually tried and liked meal kits, so instead of rants, they get a balanced treatment. She’s better when talking about her direct experience than when presenting history.