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St. Matilda: Patron Saint of Mothers Whose Kids Are Entitled Little Shits
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Descendant of a Saxon king and wife of a German one, St. Matilda (aka Maud) lived in the last quarter of the 9th century. She and her husband, King Henry the Fowler, were parents of Otto, who became the emperor of Germany; Henry Jr., who became the duke of Bavaria; Bruno, who became the archbishop of Cologne; Gerberga, who as a woman didn’t get much ink devoted to her in the historical record that wasn’t mostly about her politically important marriage (to Gilbert of Lotharingia, then Louis IV of France); and Hedwig, ditto (to Hugh the Great). When the king...
Announcing flat rate shipping
I’ve implemented flat rate shipping for all orders going to U.S. addresses at the Seraphin Station shop. Just about everything ships for $5 in the U.S. What doesn’t ship for $5 ships for $10 (a few large, heavy, and fragile items). See the Shipping Rates page for details. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, because if customers hate complicated and unpredictable shipping rates, I hate having to take out the calculator and scale every time somebody asks me how much it will cost to ship a given item. I finally had enough data to be able to figure out...
Hanging Tree Guitars
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Artist Freeman Vines on the guitars he creates and the wood he makes them with: “The wood, actually everything, is involved spiritually. A little spirit rubs off on everything.” Read more — and you should, you should click through and read the whole thing — at Atlas Obscura, “A North Carolina Artist’s Search for a Lost Sound Uncovered a Dark History,” by Winnie Lee.
Hoodoo in the Lowcountry
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“Lowcountry Root Doctors” in South Magazine covers, among other things, the delightful (and epic) tale of the battle between the High Sherrif vs. Dr. Buzzard.
Reckitt’s laundry bluing in Dublin
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There’s a lovely little post at Le Lapin dans la Lune, the blog of French children’s book author/illustrator Delphine Doreau, titled “From riches to Reckkit’s, ultramarine blue at 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin.” It talks about her encounter with a wall on that street in Dublin, striking because painted an incongruous but beautiful ultramarine blue. She was told it was blue because it had been painted with Reckitt’s bluing, which was once used as a disinfectant. Thinking that sounded a little odd (quite rightly), she investigated. The blog post explains what she discovered and where her thoughts took her as she...