Oddments of High Unimportance logo Oddments of High Unimportance

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not enough time.”

Leonard Bernstein

Finished reading: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi 📚 on Derek Sivers recommendation. Good intro to Adlerian psychology, which doubles as a sensible philosophy of life.

Key takeaways:

  • Your happiness is based on the quality of your interpersonal relationships. We live in a society, and to be of service without expecting recognition is key to finding one’s “place” and therefore purpose.
  • Be clear about the boundary line between what is your task and what is someone else’s task. If the task I am engaged in makes me disliked by someone, that dislike is their task. It is not my task to make them feel better or to somehow make their dislike go away. My task can be to ask how I can help or to sit with them, but my task is not to make them feel better about me.
  • There are nuances to this standpoint, of course, but that’s enough to get started on.

More than a guidebook for aspiring wizards, Magic is also a veiled theory of religion. According to Henry Evans, whose introduction performs a kind of historiographical sleight of hand, spiritual miracles, paranormal experiences, and occult occurrences in ancient times point to a forgotten pre-history of modern stage magic. “Weeping and bleeding statues, temple doors that flew open with thunderous sound and apparently by supernatural means, and perpetual lamps that flamed forever in the tombs of holy men”, believes Evans, “were some of the thaumaturgic feats of the Pagan priests.” (Two hundred pages later, in Book II, Hopkins offers detailed schematics of “temple tricks” designed by the Ancient Greeks, discussing Heron of Alexander’s description of the Triumph of Bacchus, a mechanical shrine with self-moving figurines, and the dicaiometer, a jug that magically poured a perfect measure every time.) In the Middle Ages, continues Evans, the frequent reports of phantoms were a by-product of improvements in optics, for magicians with concave mirrors “were able to produce very fair ghost illusions to gull a susceptible public.” Witches burnt at the stake during the Enlightenment, he intimates, may have been magicians fully committed to their trade.

Source: Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions (1897) – The Public Domain Review

Gelatin as a "power flex"

Another important part of the Candlelight story line is the culinary tradition. Servants worked tirelessly to prepare elaborate dishes for the governor’s table.

“As you read through cookbooks of the time period, you start figuring out, Oh, so this is going to take a very long time,” says Matt Arthur, Tryon’s living history program coordinator. “We think a gelatin dessert is easy; it’s just a box of Jell-O and boiling water. Back then, they were boiling calves’ feet, going through a purification process, using bladders of freshwater fish and deer antlers. It took a long time to do all of that.”

Arthur considers any 1700s recipe that involves gelatin to be a “power flex.” Those dishes demonstrated to the governor’s dinner guests that he had enough servants to pull off such complicated recipes. Food was a way for people of stature to show how wealthy they were without saying it.

Source: A Colonial Christmas at Tryon Palace | Our State