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The Hidden Almanac for
Wednesday October 1st, 2014
Episode 165
The Hidden Almanac
Previous episode: 2014-09-29
Next episode: 2014-10-03

Summary[]

Today we recall Eland the Younger’s description of a fruit fly. It is also the day the great cataloging was undertaken. It is the Feast Day of St. Albrecht, and in the garden, there are bulbs.

Be Safe, and Stay Out of Trouble.

Transcription[]

Welcome to the Funkadelic and also Hidden Almanac, I’m Reverend Mord.

Today is October 1st, 2014.

It was on this day that the naturalist Eland the Younger first described the Banded Fruit Fly. These fruit flies are distinguished from all the other fruit flies out there by a small white line on their abdomen. Banded Fruit Flies can lay over 2000 eggs in their lifetime, which take six days to hatch. They do nothing particularly interesting, but there are certainly a lot of them.

And it was on this day in 1971 that the Royal Museum began a concerted effort to catalog every single item in the collection. As the Museum contained more than three million individual items, acquired, donated, and sometimes outright stolen over the centuries, this was a vast undertaking.

The process took over six years, and was spearheaded by the legendary curator Malala Butler. She led teams into the dark vaults beneath the museum, battled dust spirits and unquiet dead, and singlehandedly destroyed a fearsome spirit that had previous been trapped in a clay jar for eleven thousand years. Ms. Butler was knighted for her contribution to museum science and serves on the Royal Museum’s board of directors to this day. The catalog has been updated faithfully since, and the archives slowly digitized to keep pace with technology.

It is the Feast Day of Saint Albrecht, patron of engravers. St. Albrecht made woodcuts in the 1500s, and devoted his life to producing an extraordinary illustrated “Lives of the Saints.” He lived long enough to see it printed and a copy given the Pope, then died peacefully at the age of 88. The Pope halted the presses and commissioned a final woodcut. All future editions end with a final illustration of the life of St. Albrecht, carved by his apprentice. It is lovely when things work out like that.

In the garden, it is the season to plant bulbs. Puschkinia, the striped squill, has become popular of late. This bulb flowers in mid-spring, having green, strap-like leaves and white flowers with blue stripes. It is found in mountain meadows and on rocky slopes, but adapts well to regular garden soil. There are several good varieties of striped squill, and the straight species is nothing to sneeze at either.

The Hidden Almanac is brought to you by Red Wombat Tea Company, purveyors of fine and inaccessible teas. Red Wombat --- “We Dig Tea.”

Also brought to you by “City of Taxidermists” a dramatic thriller coming to a screen near you. Do you fear being stuffed and mounted on a wall, like a trophy deer? Of course you do. Everyone fears that. It is a totally normal fear. Come to “City of Taxidermists” and see your worst fears realized, only happening to actors and not to you.

That’s the Hidden Almanac for October 1st, 2014. Be safe, and stay out of trouble.

Outro[]

Out of Character

The Hidden Almanac is a production of Dark Canvas Media. It is performed & produced by Kevin Sonney and written by Ursula Vernon. The voice of Pastor Drom is Ursula Vernon. Today's music is Latché Swing with "Hungaria" which you can find at the Free Music Archive. All other content is copyright 2013-2014, Ursula Vernon.

Notes[]

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