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Recent Posts
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Hedge Witches
- What’s New for the 1st of March: Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks, Rosanne Cash’s ‘Runaway Train’, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, plus new Americana and jazz music
- A Kinrorwan Estate story: Cranachanh
- What’s New for the 15th of February: Some Seanan McGuire fantasy, Alison Bechdel’s latest, Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin; Nordic sounds, old time, Americana and Tex-Mex music
- What’s New for the 1st of February: Kage Baker retrospective; new Americana, Buddhist chants and Finnish songs, new and reissued jazz, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Fireplaces in Kinrowan Hall
- What’s New for the 18th of January: World music and fiction by Amal El-Mohtar
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Bridges and Paths plus a Troll
- What’s New for the 4th of January: Favorite books and music of 2025
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Mythologist John Campbell
- What’s New for 21st of December
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pub Ghoulies
- What’s New for 7 of December: books by Alan Garner, and holiday music new and old, Celtic, Americana, jazz and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Several Annies, Part Two
- What’s New for 23 November
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Several Annies
- What’s New for the 9th of November: rhymers and ravens, folk songs and folk tales, jazz guitar and dark forests and constellations put to music, Hungarian tunes and knights and rakes and tinkers and fools, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Kedgeree
- Whats New for the 26th of October: some Patricia McKillip books and an interview, ’70s jazz reissues, Nordic Americana and American Americana, and some Samhain seasonal albums
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Charles and Alice Pay a Visit (A Letter to Owyn)
- What’s New for the 12th of October
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Pudding Contest
- What’s New for the 28th of September: Appalachia in books, music and more
- A Kinrown Estate story: Autumn is Upon Us
- What’s New for the 14th of September: Books, film and music with a piratical theme; plus Corsican polyphony, Balkan sevdah, Americana music, Hardanger fiddle with reindeer, Latin jazz and piano trios
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Irish Coffee
- New SF from James S. A. Corey; Terry Gillian’s Excalibur; Rolling Stones do Aaron Copland’s ‘A Fanfare for The Common Man’; An offbeat history of coffee; an interview with Russian folk singer Zhenya Wind; and a grab bag of folk music
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Waltzing Matilda
- What’s New for the 17th of August: Lots of Cropredy reports and reviews, and some new jazz and Americana;
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Hidden Dragon
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
Posted in What Nots
Tagged Folkmanis puppets
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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
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
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
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
Posted in What Nots
Tagged herbal medicine, traditoinal medicine
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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
Posted in What Nots
Tagged herbalism, traditional medicine
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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
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
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
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