Category Archives: What Nots

Folkmanis’s Blue Dragon, Green Dragon, Three Headed Dragon, and Phoenix

Oooooh, shiny! I have a box of dragons here! Folkmanis makes the best puppets ever, and their dragons are some of the finest of their puppets. The first to slither out of the box is the Blue Dragon. At 13 inches … Continue reading

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ZBS Media: four top picks

ZBS Media has been around since the 1970s, but I became aware of them in the 80s, when my spiritual advisor, Mindy the Pagan Hairdresser, lent me cassettes of The Forth Tower of Inverness and Moon Over Morocco.  This year, … Continue reading

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Folkmanis’s Mouse with Vest

I am here today to speak of Rodents of an Unusual Size. No, not the ones that the hero battles in the Swamp in William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, but rather the far more adorable ones that came in recently … Continue reading

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Folkmanis: Four Finger Puppets

A group of Folkmanis finger puppets appeared on my desk recently. These came without the usual tags — they are all quite small — so I did a bit or research on them. Here they are, in no articular otder. … Continue reading

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James Green’s The Male Herbal

James Green’s The Male Herbal: Health Care for Men and Boys is an interesting addition to the literature of alternative medicine. His focus is intentionally limited to a group that, believe it or not, could quite possibly be underserved – … Continue reading

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Andrew Chevallier’s The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants

Until the last fifty years or so, people relied almost exclusively on plants as medicines, not only for minor, common ailments, but for potentially life-threatening illnesses as well.  In fact, most of our prescription drugs are based on compounds found … Continue reading

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Chicago’s Field Museum of Natura History: Inside Ancient Egypt

As we traverse Stanley Field Hall, the central main-floor atrium of the Field Museum of Natural History, we notice off in the southwest corner, behind a row of arches, what looks to be an ancient Egyptian mastaba. Well, close — … Continue reading

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Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History: Traveling the Pacific

The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on the planet, at its widest stretching about 11,000 miles across — almost half the diameter of the earth. This is just one of the fun facts that lead into the … Continue reading

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Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History: Restoring Earth

We tend to think of museums as places that display artifacts, sometimes on the walls, sometimes in cases, with descriptions of varying degrees of completeness on labels next to the objects. That is also true to a large extent of … Continue reading

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Two period novels for your delectation: David Liss, and Barbara Monajem

The Peculiarities by David Liss is a strong steampunk story about Victorian magicians, featuring Aleister Crowley and other lights of the era. Thomas Thresher, a formerly well-heeled idler now enslaved in his family’s bank, has a lot of problems. His … Continue reading

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